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Adult Action-Oriented Learning Models
The Public Sector Consortium uses an adult action-oriented learning model in the design of our programs. The programs incorporate scenarios and examples that are relevant to public sector workplaces by including exercises that are comparable to those leaders would encounter in their work setting. The classroom experience provides the opportunity to practice and learn new behaviors. Participants experience the marriage of current management practices with a strong focus on the challenges and systems that are unique to public leadership. The programs are focused in part on the principles and disciplines of Organizational Learning but also include Facilitation Strategies for Leaders, Strategic Alignment, Performance Skills, and Negotiation Practices, among others.
Sustainable Leadership Practices
Given the leadership role of the United States in the world, our choices as public leaders often have an impact well beyond the American citizens that we serve. In this context we believe that public leaders must have the capacity to serve both their organizational missions as well as the larger mission we all share: sustaining resources (human, natural and economic) for future generations. Sustaining resources to serve the public good requires us to think differently about our role as leaders and to develop tools and competencies that support this new model.
The Public Sector Consortium is committed to reinventing the model of public sector leadership. We have identified several practices that we believe are essential to this new model and have incorporated them into our curriculum. We are currently focused on the need to provide leaders with advanced skills that will redefine high performance as both accomplishing their organizations’ missions and sustaining the resources necessary for future generations.
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The Public Sector Consortium Board of Directors
Georgianna Bishop, the President of The Public Sector Consortium (P.S.C.), specializes in the development of public sector leaders who are interested in both learning and action. With over thirty years of public sector experience, she served for many years as the Director of Human Resource Development for the Regional Office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She worked to develop cutting-edge learning opportunities, incentive award programs, performance systems and workforce development plans. She has brought her experience to the design and implementation of the P.S.C.'s Formal Learning Programs. She provided internal consultancy to NASA, the Department of Education, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Food and Drug Administration, and many others. A time tested coalition builder, Georgie is also recognized for her ability to build learning teams that are interested in understanding how they currently work together in order to achieve different outcomes and results. Click here to read Georgie's full bio (PDF).
Patty Guard Patty Guard recently retired after twenty-seven years with the United States Department of Education where she spent most of her career as the Deputy Director of the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). During her tenure as a career senior executive, she provided leadership in transforming OSEP from a hierarchical organization into a team-oriented learning organization focused on shared vision and values. She served as Acting Director during eight changes in the political Director's position. Patty is recognized for her extensive expertise in the competencies and skills needed for success during these transitions. She began her career working in a local school district, and upon moving to Washington was staff to the Committee on Education and Labor in the United States House of Representatives for eighteen months prior to joining the Department of Education.Click here to read Patty’s full bio (PDF).
Kirke Harper is currently chairman of the Public Employees Roundtable Advisory Board at the Council for Excellence in Government, which sponsors Public Service Recognition Week, an annual national celebration of public service in America. His many years of government service included managing the human resources and administrative functions of the Office of Personnel Management and the Environmental Protection Agency. At the Consumer Product Safety Commission he directed the budget, planning and evaluation, and congressional relations functions before becoming Deputy Executive Director and Acting Executive Director. He was also part of the Office of Management and Budget team that established the Environmental Protection Agency. After leaving government service Kirke was responsible for managing the Graduate School, USDA’s corporate strategic planning process, and was Director of the Graduate School’s Leadership Development Academy. Click here to read Kirke’s full bio (PDF).
Bette Zaslove Novak has over twenty-five years of leadership, management, supervision, performance, organizational development and human resource consulting in the public, private and non-profit sectors. In 2003, she became Owner, President and Senior Coach-Consultant of LifePath Associates LLC, a women-owned company dedicated to coaching government managers how to lead management teams effectively and develop and implement their strategic plans. In 2005, she moved her business to western Pennsylvania, renamed it LifePath Associates of Pennsylvania LLC (d.b.a. LifePath Associates LLC) and expanded her focus as a business-life coach to help her business clients explore and expand their options and identify the opportunities that will make them exceptionally competitive in their field or industry in addition to being more profitable. When organizations require reorganizing or a mid-course correction, Bette and her associates bring a multitude of organization change and effectiveness tools for building high performing teams, visionary leaders and effective supervisors and employees to help them achieve their change and transition goals. From 1991 through 2002 Bette worked with program offices and senior executives in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, U.S. Department of Education, and the Fairfax County Government Department of Public Works and Environmental Services to help them achieve their reengineering and leadership development initiatives. Click here to read Bette’s full bio (PDF).
Dr. Tony J. Rollins is the director of KnowledgeGate, LLC, which he founded in 2002 and is dedicated to systems improvement in public schools and educational associations through on-site consulting, presentations, meeting facilitation, training and coaching. In addition to over a decade of teaching experience, he was an executive with various educational associations that worked closely with teachers, administrators, parents, school boards and political and community leaders for over twenty years. Tony was also the Assistant Executive Director of the National Education Association in Washington, DC where he played a major role in creating the Learning First Alliance, a unique partnership among the twelve major national education organizations that represent teachers, school boards, parents and administration executives. Click here to read Tony’s full bio (PDF).
Eleanor Mulvaney Seamans is the principal and founder of the Glastonbury Company, a Waltham, Massachusetts consulting firm specializing in personal and corporate transformational learning. She has more than 20 years of experience as an educator, trainer and organizational consultant, working primarily with senior corporate leaders and entrepreneurs to translate vision into organizational effectiveness and profitable performance. Clients include Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance, Lincoln Financial Advisors, and Forrester Research, Inc. Since 1993 she has served her primary client, Seamans Capital Management, as Chief Operating Officer. Before founding the Glastonbury Company in 1988, Eleanor was a director at New England Financial, an educator in the Brookline Public Schools, and an educational consultant. She holds a BA in Sociology from Emmanuel College in Boston and an MS in General Special Education from Simmons College in Boston. A frequent participant in the Harvard Medical School Continuing Program in Spirituality, she is a member of the Society for Organizational Learning. She is also a member of the Board of Advisors of Compassionate Communications, in San Diego, California. Click here to read Eleanor’s full bio (PDF).
Pat Spitzig was a facilitator of organizational learning in the US Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A.) for five years and has thirty-two years of varied experience working in both its headquarters and in the field. She was the leader of a major six-year partnership initiative agency-wide, which recognized and expanded considerably the proud F.D.A. tradition of working with groups outside government. Quickly realizing the dearth of resources available on this topic, Pat developed and ran a leveraging seminar, acted as consultant to smaller groups endeavoring to partner with groups outside of government, created a “Stone Soup” chapter that became a part of the F.D.A.’s leveraging website, and developed and ran a national teleconference on this vital workplace subject. Pat is a Certified Coach for Performance Scorecard work, and her complete resume includes screenwriting, various positions in short film production, and watercolor painting. Click here for Pat’s complete bio (PDF).