Diana Gurwicz, CMF™
“Diana’s communication skills and leadership ability fit our needs very well at that point in time for our organization. She was able to coalesce two boards with vastly different responsibilities and enhance current activities and future direction”
Over the past 25 years, Diana has helped clients all over the world in varying industries improve their performance, invigorate their organizations, and streamline their processes to not only win, but to change the game in their respective environments.
Diana has been working with Leadership Strategies, Inc. as a core team member and trainer of facilitation skills since 2009. In her role as a core team member and a CMF, Diana has facilitated numerous sessions including conferences, strategy sessions, focus groups, process improvement workouts, business analysis sessions and training workshops for private and public-sector clients as well as non-profits. Diana leverages her background as a high-level management consultant with McKinsey and her Wharton MBA to ensure that clients get ideal outcomes from every facilitated session, a consensus driven process that delivers best in class results.
Board Level Retreats
Diana has created engaging sessions that both engage and instruct on some of the most pressing topics in the industry today including conflict resolution, organizational effectiveness, diversity, and performance management. Clients demand her services to design and deliver global symposiums that bridge political, functional, and divisional boundaries to tether groups together and deliver against a common vision.
Clients include:
- BASF
- BDP International
- Curacao Airport Partners
- IRC Global Partners
- IEEE (Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers)
- Magee Rehabilitation Hospital
- Pfizer
- State Bar of Georgia
Consumer Products
Diana has worked in the consumer products industry on projects ranging from product development to packaging design. She has facilitated numerous sessions that challenge groups to think creatively and explore existing and future customer needs and desires in distinctive ways. Diana’s background in competitive intelligence helps deliver opportunities with sustainable market advantage. Diana employs facilitation to disclose the gaps in thinking so the pitfalls can be addressed and the organization can move forward on a realistic path to delight the customer.
Clients include:
- International Paper
- JoFit Apparel
- Levi Strauss & Co.
- Kellogg Foods
- Kikkoman Foods
- Novus
- Roche Pharmaceuticals
- Sunbeam
Issue Resolution
Since change is constant, all organizations experience conflict at times throughout their existence. Some conflicts are rooted in directional disputes of where to take the company, while others are relegated to conflicts that occur between different key members of the organization. Diana can engage employees at all levels and from all background to inspire trust, release tension and explore common ground as the foundation of lasting consensus with all participants. Her techniques and insightful exercises promote collaboration among dissimilar groups with distinct agendas. Diana employs emotional intelligence in her facilitation process to enable all sides to be heard and inspires confidence in the process. The result are clear…best practice solutions that keep the organization moving forward.
Clients include:
- BDP International
- Foley & Cox
- Honeywell
- IRC Global Partners
- JoFit Apparel
- Lion Brand Yarn
- MITRE
- National Medical Association
- Hines Real Estate
- NYU Wellness and Crisis Prevention
- Synergy Medical Corporation
- Yale Health System
- Vaniam Group
Organizational Effectiveness
The workplace has never been more volatile than today, when productivity demands are the highest they’ve ever been, and the need to recruit and retain people with greater technical skills can bring workplace dynamics that are extremely challenging. Diana has facilitated organizations across many industries to improve their working relationships, define processes and procedures that deliver expertly on the needs of existing and future customers and focus everyone on the most important goals of the organization. She has performed a significant amount of facilitation and consulting work in organizational restructuring, winning the war for talent and increasing diversity in the workplace.
“We were very pleased with the professionalism and the guidance that Diana provided before, during and after the session. In fact, we hired her back 4 more times to conduct sessions that would flesh out our Women’s Network initiatives into firm-wide programs and create compelling communication messages to broadcast our new focus on women’s concerns throughout the firm.”
Clients include:
- AstraZeneca
- Church & Dwight
- Glaxo Smithkline Beecham
- Fish and Wildlife Association
- Foley & Cox
- Hines Real Estate
- Hiscox Insurance
- IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
- Johnson & Johnson
- Lion Brand Yarn
- Medical University of South Carolina
- Synteract HCR
- Vaniam Group
- VSE Corp.
- XR Trading
Manufacturing
Leveraging both her technology development background and her management training, Diana has provided both short term and long-term assistance to companies in all facets of the supply chain. Diana is certified by APICS in Production and Inventory Management and Integrated Resource Management. She has worked with several Baldridge Award winning clients and has solid experience with Kanban technology driven just in time inventory solutions. Diana has helped many clients find operational efficiencies throughout their organization utilizing creative applications of best practices such as reverse auctions, work-out sessions, and war games analysis.
Clients include:
- BASF
- Baxter Pharmaceuticals
- Bay Networks
- Corning
- International Paper
- Kikkoman Foods
- Levi Strauss & Co.
- NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)
- Roche Pharmaceuticals
- Urschel Laboratories
- Xerox
Strategic Planning
Diana is a very strong facilitator when it comes to helping companies navigate the future. Companies from every industry, spanning, profits, non-profits, and governments turn to her repeatedly to lead them through dynamic, creative sessions that will expose their true strengths and opportunities and discover how to best leverage their today to establish the best possible future for their organization. She brings a wealth of experience and an attitude that helps teams transcend the uncertainty of the future to charge forward and define new roads to travel.
“ Diana demonstrated patience as she worked with our HR leadership team to see the possibilities of thinking beyond the drinking from a fire hose mentality. The introduction of the Drivers Model was very easy to comprehend and apply. Diana challenged us to go beyond the planning phase and venture into the action planning phase with our teams.”
Clients include:
- BDP International
- Curacao Airport Partners
- Deloitte Consulting
- EPA (ORIA – Office of Indoor Air and Radiation)
- Hines Real Estate
- Honeywell
- Jewish Federation of Atlantic County
- Levi Strauss & Co.
- Little Bros. Friends of the Elderly
- Medical University of South Carolina
- MML (NIST) – Material Measurement Labs
- National Medical Association
- Novus
- NYS Court Improvement Project – Child Welfare Reform
- Oswald Companies
- Penn State Health
- XR Trading
Technology
For much of her career as a facilitator and consultant, Diana has worked with technology development organizations and is certified in many of the pre-eminent software packages. Diana has led teams through challenging technology roll-outs and has facilitated the creation of dynamic work flows that streamline activities and get the most leverage from existing products. More recently, Diana has worked with several high risk groups to identify and resolve cybersecurity deficiencies.
Clients include:
- Cisco Systems
- DuPont Pharmaceuticals
- Hiscox Insurance
- Levi Strauss & Co.
- Maryland Virginia Milk Producers Association
- International Paper
- Kikkoman Foods
- Oracle Corporation
- SAP
- Sun Microsystems
- VSE Corp.
Training
Diana is a Core Team member for LSI, and she is often engaged to teach many of the courses offered by the leader in facilitation training. She has also created several of her own courses which she has delivered to groups of all sizes and in many different industries. Diana brings her vast experience as a facilitator and consultant into every training session, translating best practice concepts into real world exercises that prepare participants for whatever challenges they face long after the class has ended. Diana has received high praise for her training style, which is fast paced, flexible, and focused on the needs of the students in the room, and not on “presenting a canned set of slides”. She is also uniquely available to her students and has maintained relationships with many of them. They often describe her ongoing support as “invaluable”.
Courses include:
- Advanced Facilitation
- Career Boot Camp
- Conflict Resolution
- Effective Facilitator
- Emotional Intelligence
- Environment Canada
- Negotiation
- Strategic Planning
- Taking Flight with DISC
Certifications
- Certified Master Facilitator
- Certified Independent College Counselor (for pro bono work with high school students as a career coach)
- Certified Trainer for Taking Flight with DISC, Marlton, NJ
- CIRM (Certified in Integrated Resource Management, CPIM (Certified in Production and Inventory Management)
- Certified in SAP, PeopleSoft
Education
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, B.S., Economics and Engineering
Wharton School of Finance and Economics, Philadelphia, PA, MBA
