“Our organization hired Wiser Leadership to work with executive leaders as part of our work to support, accelerate, and empower high priority school district leaders. Teresa, in a short time, was able to build relational trust and help our leaders build the capacity to solve problems of practice. She has fostered a professional learning community among these leaders, which has dramatically shaped how they show up as leaders, and utilizes the collective expertise of the group to maximize the impact of their work in their districts. She is not afraid to name the dynamics of social and racial injustice infused into the institutions in our society to reshape how our leaders think about their work. In fact, one reason we hired Wiser Wilder Leadership is that when I met Teresa at Harvard in 2018, I found her approach to working with leaders to help them become more astute in understanding the dynamics of the intersectionality of race, gender, and socioeconomics to be truly revolutionary. She is passionate about her work with these leaders. Her work reflects a moral imperative to uplift, elevate, and empower leaders to lead and sustain large-scale improvement. Her work has positively impacted the leaders who set the tone that profoundly impacts the development of the potential of our country’s greatest and most important resource, our children.”
“I hired Teresa last year as combination leadership coach and spiritual guide, after taking on a new role in an explosively growing organization. I met Teresa several years ago when she was teaching a course on executive leadership as part of a larger program I was in, where I connected with her right away. I appreciated how she could explain very complex, important topics in a way I could immediately understand and use in my leadership at work. As my executive leadership coach and spiritual director, she is guiding me on a journey toward more freedom and joy in my leadership. As just one example, I have learned how being the only daughter of an immigrant family and a woman of color in corporate America led to me putting enormous pressure on myself. Teresa is helping me put down the burdens while retaining the gifts of this heritage. She has also helped me integrate my spiritual life into my leadership life. I am so grateful that I met Teresa and that I have her as a companion on the journey to becoming a stronger leader with a deeper spiritual foundation. She makes me feel seen and truly supported in reaching my full potential and enjoying it!”
“It would be hard to overstate the impact of Teresa and her leadership on my life. I worked for Teresa in the past, and in that role had the opportunity to benefit from her Wiser Leadership approach before it even had that name. Over two decades, I have seen her leadership from many angles, including her own executive leadership of the programs she hired me into. She inspired me in so many ways, not only to expand how I saw my leadership impact, but also to think more expansively as I transitioned out of my primary career work and into the work I do now, bringing my hard-earned wisdom to those organizations that I most believe in, am passionate about, and enjoy. This, in turn, has contributed to me having a productive and meaningful transition from employment to what Teresa calls “ReWirement.” I recommend working with Teresa without reservation if you want to have a positive impact on the world through your leadership, whether you are approaching, or leaving, the executive leadership portion of your life. I recommend her in part because of the unique approach she has developed in Wiser Wilder Leadership, but mostly because she is one of the most caring, authentic leaders I know.”
“I went through an executive leadership program Teresa led between 2020 and 2022. There were many great instructors in that program, but Teresa’s Wiser Leadership approach was the heart and soul, without which the program would not have been effective. There are a lot of other leadership programs out there, but few with the heart of Teresa’s approach, and that’s what I was looking for. While Teresa’s stuff can seem a bit “woo woo” at first, it is also very clear that everything she asked us to do had solid foundations in science and research as well as ancient wisdom. She has weeded out the trendy and retained the proven. On top of that, Teresa is passionate about improving executive leadership in our world and facilitating wiser elders in our organizations and institutions. She helped me become comfortable to be courageously authentic and act with integrity in uncomfortable situations. She cares about me as a person and got to know me. She encouraged me to question her and to push back if I needed to. And, she did the same with my peers in the program. She truly wants us to be fulfilled and happy leaders. I have referred a lot of colleagues (and my husband!) to the program since I completed it, and for these two reasons—her research-backed methods and her care for us—I will keep referring them while Teresa is involved.”
“Teresa taught in an executive leadership program I participated in, and through working with her I identified values that I wanted as the foundation of my leadership. I have a strong sense of belonging, purpose, and collaboration from my family and culture, and those are the values I want to emit when I’m leading. I want people I’m leading to always feel welcome. I want that ‘nobody is going to get left behind’ feeling. Through Wiser Leadership, I learned that I don’t have to hide how my identity as a woman of color with solid foundation as a first-generation American has made me the leader I am. Instead, I can name that and claim its power. I have also deepened my sense of purpose as a leader. I am on a mission to be a leader of leaders and my greatest accomplishments have been the success stories of those I’ve helped lead. Since I’ve changed my leadership to be “WISER,” people are constantly coming up to me at work and asking to work with me. It’s amazing because some of them are not even in my area of specialization. And others see my impact as a leader now too. Partly as a result of WISER Leadership, I was promoted to a position with more strategic visibility, and I still use the practices Teresa taught me years ago, to continue to grow and develop.”
“I met Teresa in 2014 through a leadership organization and, as we worked together on the board of directors, it became very clear to me that what she brought to the organization was at a higher level, with deeper impacts, than any of the leadership training or education I’d had in my long career in industry and my work with non-profit organizations. Teresa has a rare vision for how leadership needs to shift to contribute to healing the rifts in our society. Personally, I have learned a great deal from her about my blind spots as a white leader. With my growth in this area, Teresa and I partnered to co-create The Whiteness Workshop, which we have delivered three times to rave reviews. I have made sure to keep working with her on new projects, and would hire her without reservation for any leadership program I’m involved with. I have watched Teresa’s approach coalesce into WISER Leadership, guiding leaders to be more Whole, Inclusive, Soulful, Environmentally Engaged, and Relational. The way her approach inspires leaders to bring their whole selves into leadership for the common good with joy has helped me personally to create a more vibrant and engaged “second act” of social activism in my retirement. I am grateful to be continually learning from and working with Teresa, and I’m very excited about the future impact of her WISER Leadership!”
“Having the opportunity to learn the WISER leadership framework from Teresa was a tremendous gift. It helped me to identify my voice and gave me the freedom to show up in my life – both at work and at home – in a wholehearted, authentic way. It has given me the courage to be relational and look for opportunities to truly see people and build connections, something I had previously thought was not aligned with leadership. The impact on the people around me has been rewarding. When people feel seen, they are empowered to be the best versions of themselves, and to me there is no better way to measure success in leadership.”