Team

Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Since she can recall, Sara has loved a good challenge (running marathons, public speaking, opera music performance) which might explain her fascination and zeal for taking on some of the gnarliest and behemoth-like business change initiatives around.  She is known to be pragmatic, results-oriented and down-to-earth (maybe it’s her Midwestern roots).  Sara is recognized for her work in transforming business culture and building differentiated brand experiences in global 500 companies.  You will find she’s in her element when she’s interacting with people whether it’s sitting with a client one on one coaching them on a sticky situation or delivering a keynote speech to 1,000 people.

Prior to founding Roberts Golden, Sara held senior consulting positions within companies including Sprint, Andersen Consulting and Ketchum. A few years back, she co-authored the best-selling book, "Light Their Fire: Using lnternal Marketing to Ignite Employee Performance and Wow Your Customers" and is a frequent keynote speaker at industry leading events on the topics of culture change, employee engagement and enterprise social networking.  She was recently named to the 2011 Enterprise 2.0 Advisory Board and consults and presents workshops on collaboration in the workplace.  Sara received her M.S. in Instructional Technology from the University of Nebraska and she continues her executive education at the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania.  She is grateful to have so many clients and team members that she calls friends.

Senior Vice President & Principal Consultant

Leah is a recognized expert on young and experienced talent and the emerging workplace, with a specialization in the culture and organizational competencies needed to support social technology adoption. She is also the mother of a blended family of five children ranging in age from 10 to 29. She likes to say that she has her own Gen Y focus group right in her own home! Leah is former national lead for Generational Talent Strategies at Deloitte Consulting LLP where she specialized in future workplace trends and issues and had a ridiculous amount of fun collaborating with the bright, young talent Deloitte attracts. Leah’s passion is helping leaders realize the bottom-line benefits of adapting the workplace to meet the needs of today’s—and tomorrow’s—workforce.

Prior to Deloitte, Leah spent many years working in the HR consulting world, gaining a deep knowledge of reward strategies and other human resource-related programs. She is a frequent speaker and writer on generational and workplace change as a challenge and opportunity for 21^st century organizations. Leah is also a singer, having her undergrad degree in vocal performance, and she and Sara will be ripping up a karaoke stage sometime soon. Leah is creator of the Emerging Workplace Profile™, an assessment tool that enables organizations to identify and prioritize future-focused talent initiatives. Leah was recently named “Communicator of the Year” by the International Association of Business Communicators for her thought leadership and contributions to the profession. She holds an M.A. degree in organizational communication from Eastern Michigan University.

Principal Consultant

Julie brings to our team a vast array of experience from her 15+ years spent helping companies successfully transform their business. From start-ups to Fortune 50 companies, from oil refineries to nursing homes to investment banks, and from mergers and spin-offs to technology implementations, her experience working across a variety of industries and with all levels in organizations enables her to provide significant insight and value to her clients. Although she is not able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, she is masterful at managing large, complex change programs, at aligning leaders and employees with business strategy and at developing creative ways of helping companies and their employees through major transformations, from the break room to the boardroom. Prior to Roberts Golden, Julie was a Managing Consultant at Towers Perrin (now Towers Watson) and also held in-house consulting positions at California State Automobile Association, Kaiser Permanente and Pitney Bowes. She received her MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Principal Consultant & Wellness Practice Leader

Jenny has been compared to a mind reader for her insightfulness, Mr. Spock for her rationality, and described as having “a way” with people by her clients (they really said these things, you can’t make this stuff up). You could say that her work as a Consultant has been greatly influenced by her work as a Life Coach and Yoga Teacher. You might find Jenny working out issues for Fortune 50 organizations to local school districts while on her yoga mat, but don’t let her sweet demeanor deceive you, her ability to face tough situations and be professional, shows up in one to one sessions and in the executive boardroom. Jenny has several years of corporate experience, her last being with Lowe’s where she managed the Leadership Development & Coaching Programs, the Succession Management Program, and New Leader On-boarding. Her breadth of consulting experience includes enterprise wide system implementations, change management, and the execution of talent management strategy. Jenny holds her BBA from Ohio University, a Master’s in Org. Development from Bowling Green, and an Integral Coach Certification through New Ventures West.

Principal Consultant

Having been a French major in college, Pam looks at learning both organizational and tech-speak as adopting another new language.  Her skills are continually being honed thanks to her two pre-teen and teenage children who infinitely teach her new forms of language as well as the need for creative approaches to motivational and communications challenges.  With a career of helping launch new products and making the complex more simple and digestible, Pam brings a creative marketing bent to each new situation. Always trying to eke out a 25^th hour in each day, she thrives on multi-tasking and high energy situations.

Most recently, Pam served as the Executive Vice President of Marketing at Teleperformance, the world’s largest call center outsourcer.  Previously, she held the role of the VP of Marketing for LiveOps, a pioneer in providing virtual work, as well as for Metreo, Inc., a leading supplier of pricing software, which was acquired by Symphony Technology Group and for Arcot Systems, Inc., a provider of authentication security solutions. Pam was a Partner at Regis McKenna, Inc/The McKenna Group for ten years. While there, she led the teams responsible for defining e-business for IBM, creating the first online travel solutions for United, USAirways, British Airways and Galileo, launching several successful start-ups and taking companies such as Rightpoint and Eloquent through successful acquisitions. Prior to McKenna, she was the Vice President at Prognostics, a leading market research/consulting firm that was acquired by NFO. Pam holds a B.A. degree in French magna cum laude from Harvard and a MBA from Harvard Business School as well as having attended the University of Paris–Sorbonne.

Senior Consultant

Maya is a genuine people person and a veritable talent magnet (and not just on the dance floor). With over ten years' experience in learning and development, change management, organizational development and team dynamics, she is a human resource master (not to mention a party planner to rival Martha Stewart). Maya holds a BA in Anthropology from UCLA and a Masters in Social Work from Boston University. She has lived and worked abroad and is fascinated by people and cultures. Her approach is unique and innovative with healthy measures of fun and “get ‘er done.” Clients covet her keen ability to connect the dots and get results quickly. She has done a variety of projects from conducting needs assessments and gap analyses to designing long-term learning and development strategies and providing human resource expertise on core business process change. She has worked with Gap Inc., Gap Outlet, Old Navy, Jamba Juice, Safeway, McKesson, Deloitte, The Medical Foundation and more. When she's not working, she spends her time actively reveling in the Bay Area, sometimes chasing the mobile cupcake truck and Baby Jacob.

Senior Consultant

Not only has Jon’s ability to guide change across functions and geographies made him very popular with his clients, it’s helped him learn to say hello in over 7 languages. From mission development and organization design to business process improvement and change implementation, Jon excels at helping his clients improve their organization effectiveness to achieve business results.    A critical contributor to the Roberts Golden team, Jon has served in both external consulting (Watson Wyatt, Accenture) and internal (Levi Strauss & Company) leadership roles and most recently has consulted to Chevron Corporation and Safeway. Jon received a B.A. in social psychology from Cornell University and an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

Senior Consultant

Anke’s unique blend of analytical thinking and a down-to-earth/bottom-line approach has “wow!-ed” many of her clients (as well as her kids and husband, proven by a well- organized family life). She has added value to her clients across industries through either designing the content of change initiatives – such as reorganizations, process redesigns, and other business transformations – or through managing and facilitating the ”people aspects” of such change processes. As a former HR executive at Bertelsmann and a senior management consultant at Towers Perrin she helped internal and external clients on three continents optimize their strategic HR programs as well as assess and manage the impact of change events. Anke received an M.B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, Haas School of Business, and an M.A. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the University Darmstadt, Germany. She is fluent in English and German and conversant in Spanish.