Professional Coaching Team

Jim Robbins has 40 years experience in the fields of new business formation, organizational design and management, technology development and commercialization, environmental technology, business operations and law.

Jim Robbins founded Business Cluster Development (BCD) in 1993. BCD has helped over 60 organizations with the formation of sector-focused incubators, regional innovation clusters and technology commercialization centers around the world. For 15 years, Jim ran the San Jose Environmental Business Cluster which specializes in technology commercialization of clean and renewable energy technology. Jim has been active in coaching the management teams of many of these incubators and business clusters.

Jim also worked for Digital Equipment Corporation where he assisted with the start-up of 25 engineering and research groups, and at the U.S. Supreme Court, where he introduced computer technology and modernized the management structure. For five years, Jim was a Principal in Panasonic Ventures, a $100 Million dollar investment fund.

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Jo Anne is a Partner at Milk Street Ventures and an angel investor with Sand Hill Angels.

Jo Anne has over 29 years of telecommunications and computer industry experience including 10 years as an entrepreneur - CEO of Gluon Networks, founding VP Engineering of JetCell (acquired by Cisco), VP Engineering at AirNet Communications as well as development and management positions at Bell Labs and Tellabs. She also worked as a principal of Nokia Innovent, a division of Nokia that invested in new and innovative companies to potentially become part of Nokia.

Jo Anne has coached companies on business strategy, team development, and board management through her work with The Women's Technology Cluster, The Forum for Women Entrepreneurs, MentorNet, and through her investment roles. Jo Anne has an MBA from the University of Chicago, MSCS from the University of Colorado and BS in Mathematics from the University of Michigan.

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Anke Thiele is founder of the coaching and consulting company The Human Link based in Berkeley, CA. Anke has been an organizational effectiveness coach for over 15 years. She holds an MBA from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, and a Masters in Organizational Psychology from TH Darmstadt/Germany. She graduated from the Professional Coaches Training at New Ventures West. Anke held senior management positions at Bertelsmann AG and Towers Perrin.

In her coaching work, Anke brings in her academic background and professional experience in three areas - organizational psychology, business management/strategy consulting, and her own leadership experience. Anke works with executives across industries - many of them in the technical, product management and engineering field - to facilitate improved personal effectiveness and business results. She particularly enjoys working with organizations who match her personal values around environmental consciousness, sustainability and true employee engagement.

Clients she has worked with include Applied Materials, California State Automobile Association, Corning, Google, Statoil, Safeway, Sun Microsystems, The Gap, Clif Bar and Zilog. Anke is the author of the book Innovative Personnel Marketing for High-Potentials.

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Nancy Friedman is a leadership development consultant, facilitator and executive coach. She helps individuals and teams improve their performance, adapt to rapidly changing environments, and improve team work and communication. Nancy is able to leverage her experience working in large, complex and rapidly changing organizations and combine it with her supportive, action oriented coaching style to get results. Nancy's years of experience leading strategic and business planning gives her a real world perspective that she shares with her clients.

Prior to founding Next Step, Nancy's management roles included Vice President of Advertising at Visa USA, Vice President of Marketing at Let'sTalk.com and various Marketing VP roles at Levi Strauss and Company. Nancy has an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.

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Jane Creech is a recognized expert in designing and implementing team-based organizations, particularly in new product or service development. Her unique ability to lead the often overwhelming and large-scale change efforts required for companies to embrace a more team-oriented culture has earned Jane worldwide recognition. Jane also specializes in helping start-up and established companies establish consistent business processes to improve customer responsiveness and satisfaction.

Many of Jane's clients include companies that have recently merged cultures, built strategic alliances, and are serious about developing and retaining their top talent. Current and recent clients include eBay, PayPal, Adobe, Cisco, OpenTable, TiVo, Cafepress, Gilead Sciences, Autodesk, NVIDIA, eSilicon and Zynga. Jane also lectures on building high performing teams in the Product Management program at the Haas Center for Executive Education.

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Hagit is a Ph.D., former CEO, and a CEO coach and advisor. Hagit's primary focus is on assisting venture capital backed biotech, technology and healthcare related companies in effectively managing change as it relates to human capital needs. Her expertise is in collaborating with investors, boards, CEOs and management teams to identify critical organizational issues and to implement changes that increase company value.

As a trained psychologist, experienced diagnostician, and former CEO Hagit brings decades of hands on insight, knowledge, and humanistic expertise in getting results for clients that are experiencing change in their organization and cultures. Hagit has served as chief executive officer for five emerging companies during her career including MyPsych, which was created to serve patients and clinical providers with an interactive web based communication tool. Her innovation and leadership as a CEO has been recognized in Forbes ASAP, Salon.com, U.S. News & World Report, CNNfn, and Inc., magazines.

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Before founding her own firm, Tricia Emerson helped build a change management practice at Anderson Consulting, served as Vice President of Workforce Solutions at Knowledge Universe and collaborated with some of our planet's top CEOs, helping them maximize their human capital investment.

Trish found her passion - change-related work - and realized she wanted to focus. As she often says, "I need to do meaningful work with people I love." That meant starting her own firm, finding the right clients and hiring the best team – people who take their work (but not themselves) very seriously. So that's what she did. The result? One of the nation's largest companies focused on change: Emerson Human Capital. Trish presents at universities, for Fortune 500 companies, and professional societies across the United States. She is the author of following books which are published by ASTD press: The Change Book; The Learning & Development Book (scheduled for release in October, 2011) and The Technology and Change Book (scheduled for release in January, 2012).

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Kim worked coaching CEO's of early stage technology companies as Executive Director of the Women's Technology Cluster. She brought her own experience as CEO of venture-backed AudioBasket to this role. At AudioBasket, Kim raised over $25 Million to build one of the first "podcasting" companies.

Kim has also worked for Motorola Ventures and was Marketing and Product Management Director for a wireless operator in Lithuania, where she grew revenue from 0 to $200,000,000. In Kim's current role at the Galima Group, she collaborates with Haas faculty to create educational programs that will provide the most impact to executives and the companies they work in.

As a leading female CEO, Kim has been featured in five books and has appeared on the cover of US News & World Report. She has served on the Advisory Boards of the Haas School of Business, the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs, and Nokia Innovent. Ms. Fisher has a BS in Economics from the Wharton School of Business and an MBA from Haas-Berkeley.

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Hana is a leadership development consultant and executive coach, specializing in coaching leaders on improving personal effectiveness and business results. Hana has 20 years of corporate experience and brings expertise in implementing organizational change and managing multi-functional teams. Hana’s clients have included Kaiser Permanente, Blue Shield of California, Roche, Charles Schwab, PENSCO Trust, Autonomy and McKesson.

Previously Hana has held leadership positions at Charles Schwab, Oracle Corporation and Blue Shield of California where she was consistently recognized for her ability to work effectively in dynamic business environments, for building effective cross-organizational relationships, and for managing multi-functional teams. Early in her career she was a strategy consultant at Accenture. She has expertise in product development, marketing and organizational development.

sHana graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and holds an MBA from Haas-Berkeley.

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Jennifer A. Chatman is the Cortese Distinguished Professor of Management at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. She was the Marvin Bower Fellow at the Harvard Business School in 2001-02, and on the faculty of the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern from 1987-1993. She received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. Professor Chatman's research and consulting focus on the business advantages of leveraging organizational culture and leading strategic change, and she has worked with a variety of organizations including Adobe, ALZA, Boise-Cascade, British Telecom, Chiron, Cisco Systems, Genentech, Intel, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Sandia National Laboratories, SAP, and the U.S. Treasury.

She teaches a variety of executive management and MBA courses focusing on leveraging high performance cultures, leading change, and making effective decisions. She teaches in executive education programs at Haas, Stanford University, Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Duke Corporate Education, The Medical Group Management Association, and the Institute for Management Studies.

Professor Chatman's research has been highlighted in Business Week, Business 2.0, The Financial Times, Fortune, Inc., The Jungle, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Working Mother. She has had numerous speaking engagements and radio and television appearances and was a keynote speaker for the Economist Innovation Summit. She has written articles that have appeared in various academic journals, such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Applied Psychology, and California Management Review. Professor Chatman has won numerous awards for her research and was recently (2007) awarded the Cheit Award for Teaching Excellence in the Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA Program.