February Leadership Coffee Chat

Leadership Coffee Chat

Sponsored by Bangor Savings Bank

Wednesday, February 28th, 7:30-9:00 AM

Pierce Atwood, Merrill's Wharf

254 Commercial Street, 5th Floor Conference Room

Portland

Susan M. Gallant, EdD, PCC – Reflective Action: Managing My Biases

The science is unambiguous. If you have a brain, you have biases - hundreds of them! They’re built-in bugs in our internal operating system. Biases, implicit and conscious, can have an enormous impact on our perceptions, thinking, decisions, and ways we behave toward each other.  Biases are baked into organizations, institutions, and cultures, giving legitimacy to how power, privilege, and access to resources is maintained. This program is an invitation to explore why and how we acquire bias and the possible impact on you and your leadership. It’s experiential with activities and exercises sprinkled throughout.

Susan is an organization and leadership development practitioner. She brings deep systems and organization experience to her practice. Susan's focus is helping to create great organizations. Great organizations are good for people, good for performance, and good for the planet.  She has worked with clients at all levels of the system and across diverse sectors – Fortune 500, family-owned, start-ups, government, health care, education, and various not-for-profits. She has collaborated globally, providing services in over 15 different countries.

Susan focuses on designing learning experiences that make visible the patterns and structures that enable or inhibit inclusion, innovation, and a sense of belonging for all. The intent is to inspire individuals, groups, and systems to gain awareness, build skills, and develop effective strategies for change. She synthesizes and integrates a range of theories, models, techniques, and tools from a variety of disciplines. Susan is a pragmatist and employs what is most likely to be productive in the current context to sustain change over time. 

Susan currently lives in Falmouth, grew up in Waterville, and spends as much of the summer as she can in Willimantic, on Sebec Lake. She’s an enthusiastic learner, committed to her own growth and development in tandem with her clients.