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Faculty

Our faculty are the best in the business.

Our faculty engaged in upcoming learning experiences:

Berit Elizabeth, Creator, Emotive Agility Training

Berit Elizabeth is the creator of Emotive Agility Training, specializing in the link between body language and emotional intelligence. She loves empowering people - especially women - to tap into the underrated power of body language to transform any situation and one's own sense of self.

After having vocal surgery at the age of 19, Berit was forced to become self-conscious of her body language in every moment. In recovering her voice, it became crystal clear to her that emotional habits that don’t serve us well can be re-patterned through physical training, and she developed Emotive Agility Training.

She studied theatrical directing and social psychology at Carnegie Mellon and New York University and has traveled the world to study embodied actor training techniques. She also ran her own personal training business before becoming COO of a group of fitness clubs, and she is certified in emotional intelligence assessment. She coaches individuals and speaks to organizations on how to leverage the power of physical presence during difficult conversations and presentations.

Berit has spoken on Emotive Agility at Wharton Business School and UMass Donahue Institute and has developed Emotive Agility programming for preschoolers and adolescents. She is developing tools for teachers and therapists to use the Emotive Agility Training process to promote social-emotional learning and mental wellness with their students and clients.

Janine Fondon

Professor Janine Fondon Janine Fondon brings more than 15 years of experience in business, online communications, strategic public relations, and multicultural marketing to her position as assistant professor and chair of undergraduate communications and liberal studies at Bay Path University.

She has held management positions in corporate communications across a spectrum of industries: Digital Equipment Corporation, BankBoston, ABC-TV (New York and Washington, DC) and CBS-TV (New York). As an entrepreneur, Fondon has built a reputation for sharing news and information across the U.S. and world via a company she co-founded, UnityFirst.com. Over the course of her career, Fondon has also assisted companies to reach the ‘front page’ in the mainstream, emerging, and multicultural markets by helping them tell and share their stories.

Click here to read Janine's full bio.

Roxanne Kaufman Elliott

Roxanne Kaufman Elliott is a coach in the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) and The Leadership Challenge (TLC) workshop. The 360° Leadership assessment tool and the TLC workshop are the results of over 30 years of research and the writings of James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner. The Leadership Challenge workshop and the LPI 360° measure Leadership behaviors at the highest levels and provide deep insights, awareness, and understanding of how to increase, improve and heighten our impact on our company’s culture, growth, success and people’s development and productivity - helping to make extraordinary things happen.

Jacqueline Johnson, COO, Caring Health Center

Jacqueline Johnson is the Chief Operations Officer at Caring Health Center since 2011. Jacqueline joined the health center in 2008, bringing over ten years of prior experience in the non-profit management sector.

Since completing her undergraduate studies at Mount Holyoke College and graduate studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Jacqueline has held various leadership roles for over eleven years, driving strategies and policies to improve operational quality at Caring Health Center. In 2017, Jacqueline began working as Adjunct Faculty at Bay Path University guiding students so that they too, can enrich our communities. During her professional career, Jacqueline served as a Board Member to several non-profits in Western Massachusetts. Most recently, she serves on Bay Path University Advisory Council and Mental Health Association Board of Directors. BusinessWest recently honored Jacqueline as a member of their 40 Under 40 Class of 2017. Her professionalism and dedication is an inspiration to all.

Jacqueline is passionate about the intersectionality of race, class, and education. Rooted in her operational approach, Jacqueline has cultivated her mission to prioritize social justice and activism within her communities to promote educational opportunity, team leadership, civic engagement, sustainability and health equity.

Michelle Maldonado, Founder and CEO, Lucenscia LLC

Learning Experience: Leadership Resilience, Talent Development, Mindfulness, Emotional Intelligence and Compassion

Michelle Maldonado is the Founder and CEO of Lucenscia LLC, a human capital development and business strategy firm dedicated to developing more mindful leaders and organizations with positive impact in the world. She is a Certified Genos International Emotional Intelligence Practitioner® and one of a handful of the Google-inspired Search Inside Yourself (SIY) Certified Teachers.® Michelle was named “Top Corporate Leader” by HR.com’s Leadership Essentials and “Woman of The Year” by the National Association of Professional Women. As a recommended speaker in SHRM’s Speaker’s Bureau, her work has been featured across industry publications and venues including The Mindful Leadership Summit, Training, Leadership Excellence, and Chief Learning Officer.

Cathy McNally

Cathy McNally's passion is helping people communicate so that they can make things happen. She does that through her work as a corporate communications trainer, a presentation coach, and an interactive keynote speaker. Along the way, she's also been a stand-up comic, founded an improv comedy troupe, and taught improv techniques in businesses. She's also been a lecturer in the Boston University Questrom School of Business and Executive Director of Voices from Inside, a program to help incarcerated women with writing, speaking, and performance. And recently, she had the honor of being a TEDx speaker!

As a corporate trainer, Cathy’s specialty has been helping teams and individuals develop and design compelling presentations. She’s worked with executives, software engineers, finance professionals, and salespeople at Fortune 500 companies in the US and Europe. She especially loves working with leadership development teams on presentations.

Kim Meninger, MBA

Kim Meninger As a certified executive and leadership development coach, Kim empowers individuals and organizations to reach their full leadership potential. Kim has coached hundreds of clients and presented on career advancement and leadership topics to corporate, non-profit and academic audiences. She is regularly sought to train, coach, and mentor current and future business leaders on the art and science of leadership, including strategy development, effective communication, team building and change management.

Prior to formalizing her leadership coaching expertise, Kim held a variety of cross-functional leadership roles in the high-tech industry where she interfaced with all levels and departments, both internally and externally. With EMC, she developed a broad view of the political and organizational forces that drive large corporate organizations and was able to successfully navigate these dynamics. Based on her relationship building expertise, Kim was tapped by EMC’s Inside Sales leadership to create a channel sales team where she coached an underperforming group of former sales associates into a crack organization of relationship managers, all by maximizing their inherent strengths. She earned the prestigious EMC President’s Award for her contribution to the organization.

Kim has a BA in psychology and an MBA from Boston College. She is an ICF Associate Certified Coach and CCE Board Certified Coach with certifications in career, executive, and leadership development coaching. Kim also holds a certificate in Executive Leadership from Cornell University. In addition to coaching, Kim serves as president of the Groton Business Association, Chair of Corporate Partnerships of WITI Boston, Vice Chair of Alumnae Initiatives of the Council for Women of Boston College, and volunteer mentor for WOMEN Unlimited. She lives in Groton, MA with her husband and two young boys.

Farzana Nayani

Farzana Nayani has been a specialist for cross-cultural and global training initiatives for over 15 years. She has been a consultant to Fortune 500 companies on diversity and inclusion, intercultural communication, and employee engagement. Farzana has seasoned experience training professionals, entrepreneurs, and business leaders on leadership, inclusion, collaboration, and effective communication. A former advisor for the U.S. Small Business Administration, she has been invited to the White House on several occasions to represent the voice of diverse entrepreneurs at meetings discussing national business initiatives and government policy. Her specialties include engaging diverse audiences in both the workforce and the marketplace, while and assisting organizations in achieving their business objectives. Her global background with professional and lived experience in Canada, the U.S., South, and Southeast Asia affords her a keen perspective on understanding and working with stakeholders from populations from around the world.

Norma Rist, CEO Consulting, Inc.

Norma Rist Learning Experience: Tools for First-Time Managers

Norma J. Rist is president of Norma J. Rist CEO Consulting, Inc., a company that provides strategic growth and profitability solutions. She has over 20 years of experience in marketing, operations, and financial management. Her management experience includes positions as a controller for a $200-million division of a public corporation and vice president and general manager for a $40-million manufacturing and wholesale company, Pepsi-Cola Bottlers of Akron, Inc. Norma is the author of Small Business Savvy (Adams, 2001).

As a consultant and business coach, Norma works with business owners to analyze financial information, improve operational effectiveness, and assess new opportunities. She has assisted hundreds of entrepreneurs in growing their businesses and improving profitability.

Dr. Cate Sommervold, Director of the Doctorate of Education program, Doane University

Cate Summervold Cate Sommervold, EdD is the Director of the Doctorate of Education program for Doane University in Lincoln, NE. Dr. Sommervold has studied leadership and decision making for over two decades, focusing her work on helping organizations and individuals discover and fulfill their missions. Her experience as a female leader encompasses startup, for profit and not for profit organizations. Cate presents on moral imagination, creativity, decision-making, critical thinking, confidence, communication, and civility. A native South Dakotan, Sommervold has additional interest in how out of doors activities impact leaders. When not creating or presenting, Cate spends her time consulting, reading, gardening/cooking and spending time with her husband and three sons.

Mark Snow

Mark Snow is the Vice President of Program Development for Assessments 24x7. His career-long passion for performance improvement spans nearly 20 years. Mark has worked with over 300 organizations, from Fortune 100 Companies to local owner-operator businesses, on over 1,000 performance-based initiatives. He has collaborated on professional development materials with industry-leading authors like Daniel Goleman, Tony Alessandra, Bonnie Hagemann, and many others. As a 4-year member on the Board of Directors with the Institute of Management Consultants, Mark devised new strategies for “moving the needle” and continues to refine simple, powerful strategies that get results.

Certified in DISC, Prevue, Psychological Type, Emotional Intelligence, Motivators, One-Page Business Plan. Presented at: ATD ICE, ATD Mena, Annual Training Conference 2011-2018, SHRM/HRMA, IQPC Corporate University Week, IMC GROW, and many others

Jesse Stanley, CPP, CFI, Strongside Principles

Jesse Stanley is known as an innovator and has a distinctive background protecting people and assets for some of the largest and best-known organizations, both domestically and internationally. Before forming Strongside Principles, Jesse directed investigations, loss prevention, and security business units for companies with interests and assets across the nation. He then served a decade in security senior management for Walt Disney World.

His unique experience has given Jesse the privilege of speaking to a number of distinguished audiences on diverse subjects such as hostile surveillance detection, workplace deviance, and brand protection.

Jesse is equipped with two distinguished designations (Certified Protection Professional by ASIS and Certified Forensic Interviewer by International Association of Interviewers) and holds a B.A. in Economics from California State University in Long Beach.

Josh Weiss, PhD

Dr. Josh Weiss Dr. Joshua Weiss is the Program Director for Bay Path’s Master of Science in Leadership and Negotiation. He is a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Negotiation Project (HNP), a subsidiary of Harvard University’s Program on Negotiation—a consortium comprised of faculty, staff, and students from Harvard, MIT, and Tufts University. Weiss is also the co-founder of the Global Negotiation Initiative at the HNP. He has been a Strategic Alliances faculty member since 2017.

In addition, Dr. Weiss is the founder of Negotiation Works, Inc., and consults for a number of Fortune 500 companies, the United Nations, and the U.S. Government. He delivers negotiation and mediation training and courses and is tasked with negotiation and mediation at the organizational, corporate, government, and international levels.

Dr. Weiss received his PhD in 2002 from the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University.

Click here to read Josh's full bio.

James Wilson, PhD

James Wilson, PhD, teaches research methods, innovation, and the capstone courses in Bay Path University’s Master of Business Administration (MBA) program. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in psychology and philosophy from Clark University, and his MBA, an MS in resource economics, and PhD in strategic management from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is also a graduate of the Exeter Humanities Institute and a Six Sigma Black-belt.

Dr. Wilson has worked at the Massachusetts Institute for Social and Economic Research as a senior project analyst focusing on the forecasting supply and demand of educators for the National Center for Education Statistics. From there he spun out a software start-up and followed with two more. Each of these has been sold; the most recent to SunGard, a Fortune 500 company.

His research ranges from an ethnography examining the reasons for the differing success of Tokyo Disney to Disneyland Paris, an ethnography of the agency issues inherent in rock-and-roll production, a case study of the organizational economics of symphony orchestras, theoretical work on the synthesis of various market theories, a statistical analysis of the factors influencing motion picture box office revenues, and an ethnography of bazaar economics in Varanasi, India.

Click here to read Jame's full bio.

Contact Info

Strategic Alliances

Bay Path University
Strategic Alliances
588 Longmeadow Street
Longmeadow, MA 01106 413.565.1555 partners@baypath.edu