About
Marcy Levy Shankman, Ph.D., is the Founder and Owner of MLS Consulting, LLC.
Overview
- Since 2001, MLS Consulting, LLC has been providing consulting and coaching services to clients to facilitate individual and organizational change through leadership and organizational development initiatives and engagements.
- Marcy works across sectors and thrives in complicated and complex spaces.
- Marcy brings 20+ years of experience to clients based on professional roles such as Chief Organizational Learning Officer (Cleveland Metropolitan School District) and Director of Leadership Cleveland & Vice President of Strategic Initiatives (Cleveland Leadership Center). Her work is grounded in sound research and evidence-based practices that are applied in unique, contextual ways.
- Marcy works collaboratively with clients through consulting, coaching, and training.
CV/Bio
Background
Marcy Levy Shankman, Ph.D. is a leadership development professional with over 20 years of experience working with individuals, groups, teams, and organizations. Marcy’s commitment to her work comes from a passion for helping individuals and organizations leverage their strengths and increase their impact. Working on initiatives that drive individual, team, or organizational change is a top priority. Marcy does this through designing and delivering powerful learning experiences for her clients through consulting, coaching, training, and facilitation services.
Work History
Most recently, Marcy served as the inaugural Chief Organizational Learning Officer for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. In that role, Marcy had primary responsibility for designing and leading an organization-wide learning strategy for a diverse workforce of over 6500 individuals. Marcy facilitated organizational development strategies, coached senior and executive leaders, and created/co-created 3 distinct District-wide professional learning series. Prior to this position, Marcy served as the executive leadership coach and organizational development strategist for the District for 5 years (2016-2021).
From 2012-2016, Marcy was the Vice President of Strategy and Director of Leadership Cleveland for the Cleveland Leadership Center. This is when Marcy deeply connected with the community of Cleveland and discovered that collaborative leadership is a practice that many organizational leaders from diverse sectors had not spent intentional time learning much about.
MLS Consulting, LLC was Marcy’s full-time focus from its launch in 2001. Prior to that time, she served in professional roles at Indiana University Center on Philanthropy, The Hillel Foundation, and the University of Iowa.
Teaching & Writing
Marcy is also an instructor in higher education and an author. She co-authored Emotionally Intelligent Leadership: A Guide for Students and its corresponding suite of companion resources, published in 2015 (2nd ed.) and 2008 (1st ed.). She continues to write articles and book chapters on the topic, including two chapters in leadership textbooks due out in late 2024/early 2025. In 2022 she co-edited a monograph on the effective and ethical use of leadership assessments for the New Directions in Student Leadership series.
Education
Marcy earned her Bachelor of Arts from the College of William & Mary, with a double major in religion and anthropology. She completed a Master of Arts in college student personnel from the University of Maryland at College Park (1994) and a Ph.D. from Indiana University in higher education administration in 2001.
Personal Interests
Marcy is an active volunteer, loves anything athletic (to watch or participate in), and continues to enjoy travel, gardening, reading, and spending time with family and friends.
Expertise
Emotional intelligence
Organizational culture
Organizational learning
Team building
Change management
Strategic visioning
Dealing with complexity
Process
MLS Consulting collaborates with clients to identify desired outcomes based on an initial exploration of needs, issues, challenges, opportunities, and interests. Through an iterative, three-step process, MLS Consulting creates a custom-designed approach that drives towards a clearly articulate set of deliverables. This process is on-going throughout the client engagement so as to ensure alignment, progress, and results.
Marcy approaches all clients with respect, openness, and trustworthiness. Hover or click the diagram to learn more about her process.
Consulting
Each client relationship is based on a co-creative approach that drives towards solutions and tangible outcomes. Consulting engagements utilize an inquiry process with client-specific design strategies and tools that can be applied and integrated for ongoing results.rnrnLearn More
Coaching
Marcy is committed to working with individuals, groups, and teams to enhance individual and collective performance. Working towards increasing leadership effectiveness includes prioritizing a goals-orientation with a foundation of values awareness and alignment.rnrnLearn More
Training
Developing and enhancing what clients know, understand, and do is core to how Marcy designs and facilitates professional learning and development training. Experiential, engaging, and dynamic training provides opportunities for taking new ideas, skills, and tools and putting them into practice to enhance self-awareness, performance, and team effectivenessrnrnLearn More
Listen
Listening is focused on client interests, needs, issues, opportunities, and challenges. Through inquiry and dialogue, Marcy gathers data and information from the client point of view to ensure awareness, understanding, and alignment.
Adapt
Marcy is flexible in designing and implementing the work. Each engagement is customized to meet identified client goals, ensuring that what is desired gets facilitated to address intended outcomes.
Create
Marcy develops and utilizes strategies, tools, and resources to facilitate and guide each engagement to address client goals. What gets facilitated or delivered reflects client input, best in class practices, and innovative practices.
Publications
Marcy writes about leadership, and has published a variety of texts about emotionally intelligent leadership. In addition to the publications below, she has published articles in academic and trade journals and posts regularly on LinkedIn.
Emotionally Intelligent Leadership: A Guide for Students
The only book for students which explores the connection between emotional intelligence and effective leadership. Based on a conceptual model that helps students to become emotionally intelligent leaders.
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Emotionally Intelligent Leadership for Students: Inventory
An evidence-based assessment of the capacities of emotionally intelligent leadership (EIL). Research that spans the globe has demonstrated that there is a relationship between emotional intelligence and leadership.
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Book Title TBD
Book Title TBD
Get In Touch
Feel free to email me at shankman (at) mlsconsulting (dot) net, or send me a note with this form.