Sally Breyley Parker
Sally Breyley Parker has worked extensively with business, governmental, and academic organizations to enhance organizational health and well-being. Through her work, she has contributed expertise in organizational culture, strategy, design, multi-party collaboration, leadership development, and sustainability. Her passion is social process innovations that tap the genius of natural systems to release the authentic power of the human spirit. The outcomes are inventive strategies, innovative designs, and transformed businesses grounded in a deep sense of purpose.
Sally has long been a proponent of biomimicry, the conscious emulation of life’s genius. Using a natural systems lens, she draws upon the lessons learned from organisms and ecosystems as they have evolved over 3.8 billion years to help businesses flourish and strengthen their health and wellbeing as organizations. In addition to biomimicry and biology, her work integrates systems thinking and organizational learning, Gestalt theory and practice, Theory U, (W)holistic Appreciative Inquiry, polarity thinking, design, and cultural anthropology.
Prior to forming TimeZero Enterprises, Sally was a founding partner and President of Currere, Inc. an organization development and design firm where she worked with a wide variety of organizations and collaborations to foster transformation and enhanced performance. She facilitated numerous strategy and organization design efforts, where her process supported organization members to clarify purpose and soul so that organizational strategy and design could be solidly grounded in the organization’s bedrock. Sally was invited to present her work in trans-organizational design at the Academy of Management and received a Telly Bronze Award in 2007 for her contributions as content consultant to IdeaStream, Designed to Perform.
She is a certified Gestalt practitioner and faculty for the Gestalt Center for Organization and Systems Development in Cleveland OH and Seattle, WA. She is also certified in Advanced Strategic Organization Design (University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business Center for Effective Organizations). She has completed the Foundation Program in Theory U through the Presencing Institute, as well as programs in Appreciative Inquiry, leadership and team development, strategic planning, and change management through Yale University, Harvard College, The Cape Cod Institute, and Case Western Reserve University. Publications include numerous articles on sustainability and she is a contributor to Organizing for Sustainability Volume One and Organization Development and Change by Thomas G. Cummings and Christopher G. Worley, 9th edition.
Education: Sally holds a BA Interior Design, a BS Cultural Anthropology, and an MA Cultural Anthropology (coursework) from Kent State University. She holds certificates in Advanced Strategic Organization Design from the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, and in Organization and Systems Development from The Gestalt Institute of Cleveland and the Gestalt International Study Center.