The Development Center
Who We Are - Affiliates
Frances Unsell, MDiv
Leadership and Organizational Consultant
Frances Unsell consults with individuals, organizations and teams on leadership, systems, and roles. She works with leaders to address the root causes of difficult dilemmas and take creative practical steps for lasting change. Ms. Unsell specializes in coaching senior leaders and high potentials, and in strategy, cultural and organizational change. She has coached leaders from the United States, Canada, the U.K., and Europe.
Through working with her, executives gain clarity in viewing their organization’s direction and how to navigate it, create roles that align with organizational goals, learn to manage themselves in demanding environments, lead with authority, and integrate learning into their ongoing work.
Ms. Unsell’s accomplishments include coaching leaders to work effectively with racially and ethnically diverse teams. Leadership materials she has written have been translated into Spanish, Korean, and Arabic. She facilitated the merger of two large organizations — one primarily black and the other primarily white — spanning ten southern states, into a unified educational, training and service organization. For eight years, she advised a national non-profit organization of 290,000 members on leadership strategies. She has consulted to an investment bank on hiring professionals with disabilities and a Big Four accounting firm on the establishment of an executive coaching program.
As a founding member and past co-chair of the Coaching Coalition, a network of Human Resource Executives and Executive Coaches who work with senior leaders, she stays abreast of the best practices of executive coaching.
Ms. Unsell has worked with executives and professionals in healthcare, education, finance, consulting, insurance, communications, trade associations, the public sector, religion, and the not-for profit world.
The New York Times and Voice of America have interviewed Ms. Unsell as an expert on women and work. She directed a career program at Barnard College, Columbia University and has taught leadership at the university and postgraduate levels.
Frances Unsell is a member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations and is a licensed psychoanalyst. She is a graduate of Hendrix College, Union Theological Seminary where she was a Rockefeller Fellow, Westchester Institute, and has completed advanced training in systems psychodynamics and organizations with The Tavistock, AK Rice, and The Grubb Institute for which she has been a conference consultant.
You can reach Ms. Unsell by telephone only at 203.655.9419.
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