Michele Mercer Lee, Ph.D.
Title:
Adjunct Faculty
Programs/Classes Taught:
M.S. in Human Resources Management and Development
M.S. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology
M.S. in Design Thinking and Entrepreneurship
Areas of Expertise:
Organizational Behavior and Development
Organizational Culture and Change Management
Leadership Development
Building High Performing Teams
Talent Management
Strategic Workforce Evolution
Facilitation & Developmental Skill Building
Career Coaching
Design Thinking
Visual Thinking
Women in Leadership
Organizational Wellness
Biography:
Michele Mercer is passionate about helping others succeed in their careers, lives, and enabling teams/organizations with improving effectiveness. She is one of the most perceptive, compassionate, and creative leaders who exemplifies the drive and courage to strive for continuous learning and development as a way of being. She has an innate sense of curiosity about life and is always seeking to engage fully with a sense of meaning and authenticity. As a leader, she intuitively sees the threads of opportunity that reside across a matrixed system, builds transformational strategies and solutions that drives material advantage, and helps others extend their thinking.
Michele has spent 20+ years working as a talent and organizational development executive with some of the most iconic global brands such as Nike, Starbucks, Microsoft, Schwab, HPE, and DocuSign, companies that have undergone significant transformation. As a global leader, she has led multi-cultural teams, mergers and acquisitions, organizational processes that scale, instituting change in complex countries, and deploying worldwide talent initiatives. Michele possesses a unique and diverse set of portfolio skills including building executive teams and coaching, leading workforce evolution strategies, managing talent assessment processes, designing program playbooks and toolkits for learning, facilitating leadership and team development sessions, and creating career pathing success profiles. As a strong advocate for gender diversity, Michele has led grass root efforts for women in tech and women in leadership global programs, workshops, and conferences focused on building confidence, branding, belonging, and mentorship.
Michele has spent decades seeking diverse opportunities to grow, gain wisdom, and work with brilliant, conscious, and transformative leaders around the world. She has a Ph.D. in Organizational & Transformative Studies, M.S. in Organization Development, M.A. in Psychology, is an ICF certified Integral Career Coach, and is a certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach. She is the author of The four mindsets of a visual ecology in the workplace: Re-visioning language through visual literacy, Drawn together through visual practice, an anthology book, and the release of her upcoming publication in 2020, which is focused on building visual intelligence. In the idea economy, Michele uses visual thinking solutions that leverage social group processes and collective intelligence to help individuals and teams discover innovative ways with approaching critical and creative thinking. As an active researcher, she is focused on visual literacy, design thinking, social construction theories, organizational systems, cognitive processing, and women in leadership/entrepreneurship. As an adjunct professor, she fosters a culturally sensitive and inclusive approach while creating engaging educational experiences. Additionally, Michele was an NCAA All American and inducted into the Athletic Hall of Fame at her undergraduate alma mater, Ohio Wesleyan University.
Some of Michele’s top values in life include health and nutrition, continuous improvement, creativity, adventure, and generosity. She cares deeply about fostering meaningful relationships and leading with integrity as a guiding principle. As a transformational coach, she supports clients with connecting to their authentic voice, aligning values and unique gifts with meaningful contribution, releasing patterns that no longer support them, and inspiring shifts in high priority life areas. In her spare time, Michele enjoys international hut-to-hut trekking adventures while experiencing new cultures and remote villages.
Michele resides in the San Francisco Bay Area
Education:
- Ph.D. Organization & Transformative Studies, California Institute Integral Studies, CA
- M.S. Organization Development, University of San Francisco, CA
- M.A. Psychology, University of Santa Monica, CA
- B.A. Ohio Wesleyan University + Study Abroad via Syracuse University, London, England
- Integral Certified Coach, New Ventures West, CA, ICF, International Coaching Federation
Research and Interests:
- Building visual literacy in the workplace.
- Visual thinking + design thinking as a methodology to drive innovation.
- Women entrepreneurship and growing women in leadership.
- Cultivating belonging and psychological safety correlated with engagement and business results.
- Organizational wellness as part of the new conscious and mindful workplace.
Teaching Philosophy
My goal is to create learning experiences that offers reflection, understanding, challenge, and exploration in an environment that allows you to feel safe, shine, contribute, have your voice be heard, and connect with others. Together we will understand theory, but also navigate the practice of how to operationalize and implement solutions. Failing forward, gaining feedback, and re-inventing ourselves is all part of the learning journey, and together we will support, encourage, and lift each other up to have the best career and educational experiences we can! I value curiosity, creativity, independent thinking, and unconventional approaches, and look forward to having inspiring learning exchanges with you!
