Bio

Deborah Howard is a transformative change facilitator and life-long learner whose life purpose is to enable positive transformative change in others and continue her own learning and growth in the process.

She is dedicated to helping individuals, teams, and organizations maximize their potential, enhance their effectiveness, and create and maintain work environments that are inclusive and just. She has over ten years experience guiding leaders, teams, and organizations through issues of leadership, team building, conflict resolution, diversity, strategic planning and overall organization development. She provides consulting, facilitation, executive coaching, training, and other development and strategic services to a wide variety of clients including non-profit organizations, government agencies, hospitals, unions, educational institutions, legal services organizations, and foundations.

Her professional life began in the field of law. After receiving her Bachelor of Arts Degree from Harvard University, she went on to receive a law degree from Northeastern University School of Law. She went to law school with the goal of using the law to help create positive social change. After litigating in the public service area for a number of years in both Anchorage, Alaska and New York City, she became disillusioned with the adversarial process. Rather than taking sides in win-lose scenarios, she wanted to find ways to work with people to help them build and maintain connections. It was that desire that led her to return to school to receive her Masters Degree in Organization Development from American University/NTL.

Deborah’s experience also includes having lived, studied, and worked in Japan. While an undergraduate majoring in East Asian Studies, she spent one year at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan where she studied Japanese language and culture. (She also earned her black belt in Judo while she was there.) After practicing law in Alaska, she returned to Japan to study law for a year and a half at Doshisha University in Kyoto through a fellowship awarded by the Japanese Ministry of Education. While there, she also worked part-time for a Japanese law firm in Osaka.

Her professional experience includes positions in government agencies, court systems, law firms, educational institutions, and non-profit organizations.

Deborah’s background and training in the area of diversity includes a Certificate in Culturally Competent Human Services from the Temple University Multicultural Research and Training Institute as well as coursework in human interaction and diversity at the NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science of which she is a member.

While working as a diversity and organization development consultant, she became Project Director of the Law School Consortium Project. That project, funded by the Soros Foundation’s Open Society Institute, was designed to study and promote models for supporting law graduates in meeting the legal needs of low and moderate-income individuals and communities. As a former Director of this one-person-staffed national non-profit organization, she brings insight into and understanding of the challenges non-profits face in promoting important organizational missions with limited financial and human resources.

Deborah is also the author of Repairing the Quilt of Humanity: A Metaphor for Healing and Reparation and publisher of guidingchange.org/blog