Mark is the founder of Great Company, a management consulting firm focused on building the business decision making and knowledge capabilities of the workforce in client organizations.

Creating great places for people to work, preparing for growth, engaging employees in the heart of the business, and involving everyone in making the changes necessary to sustain success, completes Great Company’s purpose.

 Prior to starting Great Company, Mark spent 15+ years leading the Training and Organization Development functions for two Fortune 500 companies, served as an adjunct professor in the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University, and served as the corporate liaison to M.I.T.’s Leaders for Manufacturing Program at the Sloan School of Business.

He has delivered numerous presentations and keynote addresses on a variety of organization performance, business literacy, and training in addition to chairing the National Technical Skills and Training Conference for the American Society of Training and Development.

Since 1980, Dr. Richard Friend has partnered with clients in every sector on issues of diversity, leadership and organizational effectiveness.  As a consultant, he excels in helping clients transform their organizations by developing leadership, promoting inclusiveness and creating high performing work cultures.  Richard has a rich history of experience working with fast and dynamic companies, as well as more “glacial” systems.  Having worked throughout the United States and Canada as an educator and consultant, some of his most rewarding work involves beginning, accelerating or reanimating organizational diversity and leadership efforts.

His major clients include the American Bar Association, Duke Energy, Lucent Technologies, Nortel Networks, PPG Industries, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Shell Oil Company, United Technologies, the University of Michigan, University of Chicago Hospitals, Westinghouse Electric and Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

Richard has pioneered novel approaches to conducting needs assessments and culture audits from which he then designs appropriate strategies and systems, including training to assist clients in their change efforts.  His areas of expertise include: Diversity Strategy and Design; Diversity Education; Leadership Development; Team Building; Management Development; Workplace Harassment Prevention and Intervention Education; Sexual Orientation as a Workplace Issue and Instructional Design.

Dr. Friend served on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education for nearly fifteen years.  He has authored many articles and chapters as well as co-authored the 7-tape video series Diversity Dilemmas...© and the groundbreaking School Diversity Inventory.  In addition to his work in business, government and not for profit sectors, Richard also consults in educational leadership.

Richard Friend is guided by the following principles for living and working:

• Modeling integrity in his life and his life’s work

• Building organizations where people are valued for who they are, not in spite of it

• Creating a world where people recognize, celebrate and utilize our similarities, differences and interdependence.

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Kyp Wasiuk spent nearly thirty years in teaching and administration in independent schools. Active in leading a number of not-for-profit boards, she is well versed in strategic planning processes for both new plans and for the revision and updating of processes. Kyp is experienced in developing effective public presentations and presence, and in creating viable strategies for building complementary relationships between boards of not-for-profit organizations and their administrators and staffs.