A seasoned Organization Development Consultant with more than thirty-five years' experience, Tracy Gibbons is the founder and Principal of CoastWise Consulting. For her entire career, she has been interested in the intersection of individuals and the systems in which they live and work and in how the dynamic and reciprocal processes of human, organization, and community change and development occur. As a result, she is uniquely qualified to help you design and develop an organizational system that optimizes interactive, synergistic relationships with employees, partners, and other stakeholders.

Tracy came of age personally and professionally in an environment of continuous innovation and legendary industry and corporate growth and development, which left its imprint on Tracy's orientation and style. She is known as an entrepreneur who understands:

• The dynamics of high growth
• Complex and interdependent systems
• The dynamics, processes, and methods of successful collaboration
• Cultures and infrastructures that enable innovation and creativity

She is a savvy, experienced consultant who has pretty much seen it all and can help others work effectively in a fast-paced environment.

Her background is eclectic, and she brings a wide range of experience to her work with you. With a degree in Community Leadership and Development, she started out as a Program Director and then a Branch Executive for the YMCA. As a grad student in Counseling Psychology, she took her electives in Organization Behavior and "discovered" the emerging field of OD. Her interest and enthusiasm were piqued, and she was delighted to discover a profession that included all of the things she loved; and almost none of those she didn't!

Leaving the not-for-profit arena, she joined Digital Equipment Corporation as an internal OD consultant during its years of peak innovation and growth. Working in its Final Assembly and Test manufacturing plant, Group Manufacturing organizations, and Organization Consulting Group she had the opportunity to work with a wide variety of clients and to develop state-of-the art solutions in human and organization planning and development, organization effectiveness, and socio-technical systems design.

After holding senior level consultant and manager positions at Digital on both East and West Coasts, she joined the internal consulting group at Advanced Micro Devices where she worked with a product development and marketing Division, Human Resources, and other organizations. There she designed and led numerous systems change programs that resulted in productivity improvements, improved customer satisfaction, and increased employee alignment and effectiveness.

In 1996, she co-founded the millpond group, an Organization Development consulting firm that specialized in developing collaborative relationships and the infrastructures to support them.

Dr. Gibbons' particular areas of expertise include:

• Development and implementation of organization and employee change strategies that are tightly linked to and enable the success of business and technical/functional strategies
• Organization design to create infrastructures that reflect and enable the strategies, goals, culture, and values of the enterprise
  
• Creation of processes that facilitate collaboration and teamwork within and across organization and corporate boundaries and increase productivity throughout the organization
• Executive and employee coaching to improve individual effectiveness, performance, and contributions to organization goals

As a lifelong learner and critical thinker in the field and practice of human and organization development and change, her work is supported by strong theoretical and conceptual underpinnings. Her doctoral research examined the developmental attributes of transformational leaders and the processes by which they acquire these characteristics of the transformational orientation. Her findings have contributed to her own and others' understanding of the dynamics of leadership, transformational change, and individual development in an organizational context.

She holds a B.S. in Community Leadership and Development from Springfield College, an M.S. in Counseling Psychology from George Williams College, and a Ph.D. in Human and Organizational Systems from The Fielding Graduate Institute. She has served on the field faculties of John F. Kennedy University, City University (Seattle), Stanford Graduate School of Business, and The Fielding Graduate Institute. She is a member of the NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science; the National, Greater Boston, and Bay Area OD Networks; the Organization Design Forum; and the Human Resources Management Group.

Alliances

In order to provide a full complement of Organization Development services, Coastwise Consulting has developed alliances with a variety of other consulting firms, including those who specialize in training and development, human resources, and reward and compensation systems.

Coastwise consultants are "inside outsiders."® All of us have worked in and consulted to many complex organizations both as employees and as outside consultants. We bring you a unique blend--the experience, knowledge, instincts, and political savvy of successful insiders, and the objectivity, neutrality, and balance of perceptive outsiders. We know first-hand the realities of life on the inside, we get up to speed quickly, and we know our way around. But we won't "go native" when what you need is for us to tell you the truth and to help you with the hard work of organization design and development.

*Lighthouse Photos by Jeremy D'Entremont, www.lighthouse.cc