Mary Ann Rainey

For more than 25 years, Mary Ann has cultivated a global client base spanning a range of business sectors by leveraging holistic principles to improve organizational and leadership effectiveness. Her executive coaching is guided by her “RSVP Fundamentals of Leadership” model. She has leadership experience as Vice President of Organizational Effectiveness for Exelon Corporation and in a public sector role as Vice City Manager.

Mary Ann is co-founder and co-chairperson of the International Gestalt Organization & Leadership Development (iGOLD) Program.  Since 2010, she has taught in the Strategic Agility and Innovation Program sponsored by the Yale University School of Management and Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut. She also has taught at Cleveland State and Case Western Reserve universities in Ohio and Benedictine University in Illinois and has served as an adjunct professor in the Executive MBA Program at Loyola University of Chicago. She was dean of the National Training Laboratory (NTL) Institute’s Global Organization Development Certificate Program in Oxford, England, and taught in NTL programs in the U.K., U.S., India, Japan, and Singapore.

Mary Ann is regarded as a pioneer in applying appreciative theory as a large group change methodology, work she conducted with renowned behavioral scientists Drs. John Carter and David Cooperrider. A prolific writer, her edited book with Brenda B. Jones,  “Gestalt Practice: Living and Working in Pursuit of wHolism” was published in 2019. Her next book, “Leadership in the Age of Not Knowing: Strategies for Leading in a Learning Way,” co-authored with Jonno Hanafin, is forthcoming in December 2022.

Mary Ann’s professional affiliations include the Academy of Management Association, Organization Development Network, The Lewin Center, and NTL Institute of Applied Behavioral Science. She and her husband Elias live in Chicago and are parents to two sons.