I am a San Francisco Bay area based management consultant with a background of 30 years working with all sorts of people and organizations. Long on experience; very much young at heart. My world is coaching individuals, leadership and startup teams.
Views expressed on this blog are my own and not the view of any clients.
I have a very full-time consulting practice incorporated as Back West, Inc. – working with individuals, teams, and organizations that started in 1996. From 2006 – 2014 that practice was a successful full-time venture. From 2014 – 2019 I worked as the Head of Talent & Culture, helping to build Atara Bio from 3 to over 300+ terrific team members to form the worlds leading t-cell immunotherapy company. In May 2019 I returned to my consulting practice full-time.
I bring to my work over 30 years of business experience and a work background that spans industries including financial and professional services, high tech, biotech, retail and wholesale distribution. While I know a lot of theory, I also know a lot through the school of experience and practice. I haven’t been just a “tourist” in the business workplace – I’ve lived there, worked hard and been a citizen. My work is marked by good, fast starts and results that last. My formal coaching training is through the Hudson Institute of Coaching; I’ve trained with the Grove Institute and Interaction Associates on my work with teams and groups.
When I work with individuals, teams and organizations it’s usually about terrain and environment I know well since I’ve held jobs from cubicles to the executive suite – all the while having coaching as a key component of my work. My consulting practice – Back West, Inc – is focused in three areas – executive coaching with individuals, coaching work with teams such as team start-ups and team building, and group facilitation and off-site design. While I’m not a fan of psychological assessments, I am also an MBTI® Certified Practitioner.
Consulting work has included organizations ranging from start-ups such as Atara Biotherapeutics, Good Medicine Consult & Advocacy, and Orexigen, Inc. to established smaller-to-mid-sized companies such as Weber Shandwick, Asia Alternatives Management, LLC, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB Group) and Fortune 500-type companies such as Synopsys, Inc., Genentech, Cypress Semiconductor, Symantec, Inc. and Gilead Sciences. I’ve also been fortunate to work with non-profit organizations such as SRI International, the Robert Toigo Foundation, the Sonoma County Economic Development Board, Mission High School’s Athletics Scholars Advancement Program (ASAP) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
I’ve held corporate roles as the Head of Talent & Culture for Atara Bio, a Senior Vice President of Human Resources with McKesson, a Director of Human Resources for Chiron Corporation, a Principal and Director of Human Resources for Fluid, Inc., and as a Principal and senior HR practitioner with Barclays Global Investors (now part of BlackRock), a San Francisco-based asset management company and during my tenure the world’s largest money manager.
The name of my consulting practice – Back West – comes from growing up in the Pacific West, and and living for a period in Chicago: calling home “back west” seemed to be the logical orientation rather than the usual “out west.” InfoATbackwest.com is the best email address to reach me.