Ellen Herman

Ellen Herman serves as a strategic advisor to a variety of organizations, chief executives, educational leaders and government officials. She focuses on helping leaders create an infrastructure and messaging that showcases organizational value to internal and external stakeholders. Additionally, she has taught courses at Boston University, the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, Bentley University and Northeastern University to executives, graduate and undergraduate students. Her primary consulting and teaching interests focus on organizational change, strategy, leadership, and executive coaching.

Dr. Herman is teaching Managing Organizational Change this fall at the Questrom School of Business at Boston University Business. In addition to teaching Managing Organizational Change, she has previously taught Leadership and the introductory MBA courses as well at Management Consulting Skills. She also participated int the development of the MBA Center for Team Learning and served as the MBA Team Consultant. She designed and implemented a process for facilitating team learning for both students and faculty. At Harvard Business School, in addition to teaching, she authored cases and participated in the development of a Project Management teaching module.

Recent consulting assignments included strategy, organizational development and coaching for the Massachusetts State Department of Transportation. At MassDOT she led process improvement initiatives for the Office of the Secretary, the Highway Division, The Registry of Motor Vehicles and the MBTA. At the UMass President’s office, Herman engaged in change initiatives.

As Deputy Director of Strategic Initiatives at Massport, Herman facilitated the development of Massport’s goals and played a major role in coordinating strategic efforts across Massport’s major lines of business. She facilitated the stakeholder outreach effort engaging members of business, community, legislature and the media in the current priorities of Massport. She was part of a team that drafted Massport’s strategic plan.

As Assistant Executive Director at the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, she created an infrastructure enabling new and existing staff to operate two facilities. She created a marketing operation, managed the search for management talent, coached leadership, redesigned and streamlined the major business processes at the MCCA.

Early in the formation of Partners HealthCare (now MassGeneral Brigham), Herman served as an organizational development consultant facilitating and implementing many projects related to the integration of the founding hospitals. She participated in creating a marketing council to coordinate marketing efforts across the group of hospitals. She also streamlined the reporting of conflicts of interest for the Office of Interactions with Industry, developed a process for sharing learnings across multiple Real Estate departments, and implemented a process for moving to electronic medical records with the Occupational Health team.

Other assignments have included:

• Developing and implementing a strategic plan for HealthCare for All including coaching their Board
• Providing strategic counseling and coaching to the Dean of Summer and Continuing Studies at Brown University – fostering the integration and streamlining of programs and processes.
• Leadership and change projects for the City of Boston (Mayor’s Office of Administration and Finance and Human Resources), Brown University, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, the World Trade Center in Boston, several US Cabinet Officers, and Toyota Auto Osaka Corporation. Served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Labor as part of the Reinventing Government initiative under the Clinton Administration.

Education

• PhD, Union Institute Graduate College, 2000
• MBA, New York University, 1986
• MS, Boston University College of Communication, 1973
• BA, George Washington University, 1971