Professional Biography
Gretchen Schmelzer is a senior associate with Teleos Leadership Institute with 15 years of experience in transformational leadership development, executive coaching and management consulting, and 27 years of experience in working with individuals, groups, organizations, and countries to help them achieve the change they want to make. She is a subject matter expert who provides Teleos with leadership designs that attend to all areas of adult development, mechanics of behavior change, and individual and group dynamics. Dr. Schmelzer is an ICF certified senior coach and licensed psychologist who provides the internal supervision to the Teleos Executive Coaches and is a core faculty member of the ICF Certified Teleos Coach Development Program. A two-time National Champion in Rowing, Dr. Schmelzer also has extensive experience in performance enhancement for individuals and teams working with Olympic, masters, and collegiate level coaches and athletes.
She has designed and led large-scale leadership development programs around the world for multinational corporations working with senior executives and corporate teams during rapid expansions, change processes, new product implementation, and merging cultures. She has an expertise in the area of adult growth and development and uses this knowledge in her program design work and her coaching. She completed a 4-year project of integrating Emotional Intelligence and Leadership into a medical school curriculum at the USF Morisani School of Medicine Select Program, successfully training and transferring the curriculum to the Medical School faculty. Her work with leaders includes work with survivors of the Khmer Rouge in a large-scale leadership initiative in Cambodia and leadership development and change initiative programs for companies throughout the world. She leads a leadership development initiative with Alaska Native leaders to help them strengthen their response to domestic violence. She has been faculty at Northeastern University in Boston and at the MCI Innsbruck in Austria. She is currently a faculty member in Executive Education Program at the Brookings Institution and Olin Business School.
Gretchen’s expertise is in treating complex problems, such as leadership, ethics, and traumatic stress, that require interventions at many levels of system. She has led training workshops in mindfulness meditation at Harvard Medical School, Franciscan Children’s Hospital, and government agencies. She is the author of Journey Through Trauma (Avery, 2018) and the founder and editor of the web mag “The Trail Guide” at www.gretchenschmelzer.com, a website dedicated to healing from repeated trauma.
