Mentor, Executive Coach
Tamara J. Woodbury
Tamara is a Mentor and Coach at Oxford Leadership. She has served in leadership roles within the social sector in the United States for 45 years, including 33 years as Chief Executive Officer. A protégé of Presidential Medal of Freedom awardee Frances Hesselbein and mentee of Peter F. Drucker, widely regarded as the father of modern management. She became a national trainer in leadership for the Peter F. Drucker Foundation and a long-standing member of the Society for Organisational Learning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
She has authored numerous articles on leadership, Gender Intelligence, Organisational Culture, and Gender Equity. Her most recent works include “Navigating Chaos with Heart: A Leadership Guide for Uncertain Times” published in the Apex award-winning journal Leader to Leader, and “Leadership: What’s Love Got to Do with It?” published in the Oxford Journal.
She has facilitated leadership retreats for hundreds of women of power, influence, and affluence, and has been a keynote speaker at numerous conferences and leadership programmes.
Expertise
Tamara has led organisations with up to 250 employees and 14,000 volunteers and has extensive experience as a facilitator and trainer. She collaborated with Marshall Goldsmith, pioneer of the 360-degree feedback performance process, which evolved into his highly respected leadership development and coaching model. She also worked with Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline and founder of the Society for Organisational Learning, becoming a facilitator of leadership curricula focused on the five leadership disciplines, including systems thinking and organisational learning.
After meeting Brian Bacon, she embraced his Self-Managed Leadership model and co-created, with him, a programme for youth and emerging leaders.
Tamara is widely recognised for her ability to lead and guide organisational culture change and facilitate organisational design with feedback loops that evolve into “living and learning systems” within organisations. She has contributed to curriculum design at three universities and is a leading authority on gender equity and gender intelligence.
Having served in leadership roles for numerous girls’ and women’s organisations over 42 years, she was invited to join the White House Council for Boys to Men under the Obama Administration, owing to her balanced approach to helping organisations create cultures that celebrate the qualities of both the masculine and the feminine without subordination of one to the other.
Worked with
Girl Scouts of the USA, YWCA, Peter F. Drucker Foundation, Leader to Leader Institute, Arizona State University, University of Pittsburg, Claremont Lincoln University, The White House Council for Boys to Men, W.A.T.E.R, Crane Mountain Abbey, Bell South, NOLs – National Outdoor Leadership School.
Qualifications
- Tamara holds a BSBA in Business Administration and certificates in leadership and professional development programmes from Harvard, Wharton Business School, MIT, Oxford Leadership, Claremont College Business School, and the National Outdoor Leadership School.
- She has facilitated and trained hundreds of CEOs and C-suite leaders across non-profit, NGO, and for-profit organisations. She is highly regarded for her experiential learning models and processes and has exceptional skills in mentoring young, emerging leaders, particularly those from underrepresented and under privileged groups.
- She has led numerous retreats for current and emerging women leaders and facilitated learning and self-evaluation processes for Fortune 100 CEOs, a Prime Minister, C-suite leaders from organisations of all sizes, and volunteer Girl Scout/Girl Guide troop leaders—whom she believes hold some of the most important roles in society.
- Having recently retired from her full-time role as CEO of the Girl Scouts, she now serves as a board member for the Arizona Community Foundation, the Hopi Education Endowment Foundation, and as a Trustee for her local public library, while continuing to write and provide coaching and mentoring on a limited basis.