Clarissa L. SawyerClarissa Sawyer Ed.D. is an Organizational Effectiveness Consultant with over 15 years of professional experience in designing and implementing action learning projects which help organizations, teams, and individuals use their own experiences to identify, extend, and reuse best practices. Previous to this she was an Organizational Effectiveness Consultant for the MITRE Corporation where she provided services in organizational assessment and diagnosis, team development, strategic planning, qualitative research, and off-site design and facilitation to MITRE’s Center for Information and Technology (corporate communications, knowledge services, and information technology), Human Resources, and Legal and Contracts departments.
From 2001 to 2007 Dr. Sawyer provided organizational development services to all levels of leadership in the Federal Aviation Administration. Prior to a position with the FAA, Clarissa held consulting positions at Arthur D. Little, Fine Line Consulting, Manchester Consulting, and Ibis Consulting Group, co-founded by Meg Wheatley and Katherine Esty. Her clients have included Warner Lambert (now Pfizer), Deloitte-Touche Tomatsu, Gillette, Morgan Stanley, and Aspect Medical Systems. She also has 20 years experience in higher education as an educator, researcher, counselor and administrator at institutions such as Harvard University, Northeastern University, and the University of Massachusetts-Boston
Clarissa has taught graduate level courses in organizational behavior, leadership, and qualitative research at Harvard University and organizational behavior and organization development consulting at Lesley University’s School of Management. She has developed teaching cases for Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education and The New York Case Studies in Public Management series that describe innovative leadership strategies in higher education and two New York State agencies: the Department of Corrections, Division of Prison Industries, and the Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities.
Clarissa has a doctorate from Harvard University in Administration, Planning and Social Policy, where she concentrated on leadership, and organizational behavior and intervention. Her dissertation examined the effective leadership strategies used by a first-time public university president during a period of financial crisis at the university. She also holds an Ed. M. from Harvard University and a B.A. in Adult Training and Development from the University of Massachusetts in Boston.