Wendy Bittner

Wendy believes passionately in the potential of everyone to grow and flourish. She also believes strongly that, as our world and our place in it become increasingly more precarious and complex, we, as humans, need all the potential we have and we can nurture.  More than ever in our history, we need the best of everyone.  To get this, we need leaders who bring not only the best of themselves but who create the conditions that enable everyone around them to thrive.  This is the work that Wendy cares about—helping leaders and their teams to make sense of the complexity around them and to develop the means to think, act, and engage in ways that meet and exceed the demands of our increasingly complex world.

Wendy first encountered complexity from the scientific side while getting her PhD in inorganic chemistry at Caltech.  From there, she became a consultant at McKinsey & Company, where she ran head-first into the complexity of the business world…and the many ways in which we, as humans, are ill-equipped to handle it.  A move into leadership development at McKinsey and beyond brought her into contact with Jennifer Garvey Berger and, later, Keith Johnston, who helped her begin to adapt the learning from the science of complexity into the practical application of complexity to organizations.  Today, as a partner at Cultivating Leadership, Wendy serves a range of clients around the world from non-profits to commercial banking, from small startups to tech giants.  Her work is as wide-ranging as her clients, encompassing individual coaching, team-based interventions, leadership programs and keynotes to larger audiences, but always working at that critical intersection of complexity and  human capabilities, helping her clients to grow into and thrive as their biggest selves.

Wendy is certified in MBTI, LVI, Leadership Circle, and Growth Edge Coaching.  When not following the nomadic lifestyle of a leadership development practitioner, Wendy has the good fortune to live in the southwest of France. Her passions outside of people development include cooking elaborate meals for friends, baseball (full disclosure, she is a Dodgers fan), games of all kinds, and wine.