WORLD ACTION TEAMS - Key Persons
David Maher is the Executive Director of World Action Teams. As a leadership and executive development consultant, David's particular expertise is in the facilitation of a more developed self and global awareness through assessments, executive coaching at both the formal and informal level, and facilitation of truly experiential education in the international arena.
David has utilized his expertise in helping with companies such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, UBS, and Anglo-American Mining. Additionally, he has done extensive work facilitating global awareness and leadership development with graduate schools across America, including University of Southern California's International Business Education and Research program (IBEAR), the 2030 Program at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and Duke University's Fuqua School of Business.
Additionally, David has done extensive work facilitating the implementation of global curriculum with secondary and undergraduate schools across America. He has partnered with schools such as The Madeira School of Virginia, Ensworth School of Nashville, Appleby College in Toronto and many others in order to develop self and global awareness in faculty, administration, and students. These efforts have taken place in the US and in countries including Belize, Costa Rica, Kenya, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti.
David is an avid mountain climber and has climbed mountains in Peru, France, Alaska, and all over his home state of Colorado. He has also led groups on kayak, mountaineering, hiking, and caving expeditions. He was the creator of PEAKS, an outdoor leadership course that operated in Virginia, West Virginia, and Colorado for over a decade. David is married and the proud father of two young high school students currently attending Fountain Valley School. The Maher family resides in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
Dr. Charles Ehrhart, Advisory Board Member at World Action Teams, was born in the US but has spent the last 25 years in Europe, South America, East Africa and Southeast Asia. He has worked within governments, the UN, civil society and the private sector fighting for sustainable development and an end to poverty in a world of plenty. From 2006-2011, he led CARE International's response to climate change across seventy-eight countries. His major responsibilities included the development and adaptive management of CARE's climate change strategy, the design of multi-country adaptation and carbon finance programmes, and organizational change.
Charles now works for Floresta, Ltd. Established in 2011, Floresta is the world's first large-scale enterprise catalyzing sustainable investment in tropical forest landscapes and livelihoods through a combination of conventional and carbon finance. The company develops large-scale projects in support of green economic development and the conservation of life-sustaining ecosystems. As a member of Floresta's Senior Management Team, Charles is responsible for maximizing the company's strategic contribution to poverty reduction and climate change adaptation.
Charles has a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, England. He continues to publish, is often invited to speak at key international conferences, and is frequently cited in major newspapers (e.g. New York Times, USA Today, The Guardian, Le Monde) explaining the social impacts of climate change. His most recent work focuses on the potential for carbon finance mechanisms to support development and adaptation to climate change. Charles is especially interested in exploring the unique roles that the private sector must play in forging solutions to today's most pressing social and environmental challenges. Charles and his family currently live in Nanjing, China.
Job Titles:
- Founding Partner
- Founder and Executive Director of World Leadership School
Ross Wehner is a Founding Partner of World Action Teams. Ross specializes in designing and delivering immersive learning experiences for leaders in Latin America, Africa and Asia. His core interest is helping leaders discover the synergies between business, leadership and social innovation.
Ross is also Founder and Executive Director of World Leadership School (www.worldleadershipschool.com), the mission of which is to empower young leaders to find new and innovative solutions to the world's pressing problems. World Leadership School accomplishes its mission by helping schools develop innovative global education programs, which include classroom projects and global travel. World Leadership School manages hundreds of K-12 students per year in service programs across Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Ross is a veteran teacher and facilitator. He taught leadership and risk management as a wilderness instructor for the National Outdoor Leadership School and as a mountain guide for Alpine Ascents, a climbing agency in Seattle. He has guided clients on rock and ice climbs throughout the U.S., Canada and Latin America. He has also taught at The Bush School in Seattle and the University of Virginia, where he earned his M.A. in Spanish and Latin American Literature in 1999.
Ross began his career as a journalist in the early 1990s, where he reported on the rapid growth of South America's economies and covered the end of Chile's Pinochet regime for the San Francisco Chronicle. He spent a decade reporting from Peru, Ecuador, Argentina and Mexico. He has written about business and finance, climate change, outdoor adventure, the organic movement and other topics for Mother Jones, Outside and other magazines. He most recently worked as a business reporter for The Denver Post.
Ross lives in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife Renée del Gaudio, with whom he co-authored the guidebook Moon Peru. Ross and Renée have two young children, Sebastian and Francesca.
Scott Miller is a Founding Partner at World Action Teams. Scott designs and delivers programs that skillfully blend relevant classroom content with experiential learning, psychological and behavioral assessments, and various forms of peer and observer feedback. He is particularly focused on translating program experiences into sustained, long term behavioral change through peer coaching and follow-up. In other words, the end of the program is not the finish line.
With over 16 years of experience working with global executives across a variety of industries and in over 20 countries, Scott has particular skills and interests in building and coaching high performance teams, leadership development, action learning, and service learning. Additionally, he has created a number of tools and processes to help organizations harness the "wisdom of the crowds" and to drive large-scale change and innovation. A sampling of current consulting engagements follows:
Dow Chemical Company - H.H. Dow Academy --Creating our Future, 2005-Present: Sponsored by Dow's CEO, Andrew Liveris, Dow Academy utilizes an action-learning approach to engage its high potentials selected from the top 1% of the company. As a team coach, Scott jumpstarts the project teams by introducing a blend of personality assessment tools and experiential activities. He assists the participants in establishing both their individual learning goals as well as the team's rules of the road or operating principles. As the team coach, he facilitates weekly team sessions as the action- learning team navigates the learning journey and works toward their deliverable to the Office of the Chief Executive (OCE).
National Australian Bank (NAB Group) - Enterprise Leadership Program, 2008-Present: Sponsored by NAB's CEO, Cameron Clyne, the Enterprise Leader Program (ELP) is aimed at developing the leadership mindsets and behaviors of the top executive talent from the NAB Group. Participants are gathered from multi-business units all across the globe into a small cohort group of thirty for this two-week program. For the ELP, Scott designed, developed and delivers a leadership simulation that clearly highlights the power of enterprise thinking and enterprise behavior as a platform for competitive advantage through the simulation and Scott's facilitation, NAB leaders explore such topics as leading laterally, leading without formal authority, and leading beyond one's sphere of control in order to win as an enterprise. Starting with the CEO and the Senior Team, the ELP will be rolled out to the top 150 global leaders over the course of 2009-2010.
University of Southern California - Marshall School of Business - IBEAR (International Business Education and Research) MBA program, 1995-Present: Comprised of one of the most diverse selection of students from around the world, the IBEAR program is a unique MBA aimed at an international (non-US) population. Over the past fourteen years, Scott's work with IBEAR has afforded him the opportunity to explore how experiential learning methods intersect with the challenges of cross-cultural diversity. Scott works closely with Dr. Jack Lewis, the Chair of the IBEAR MBA program and Dr. Morgan McCall, the Leadership in Organizations professor, to design a curriculum aimed at building unity and cross-cultural competence within this multi-cultural, multi-lingual, and international community.
Scott lives with his wife Kara, 10 year-old son Nathan and 8 year-old daughter Sierra in Shanghai, China. In addition to learning the ways of the far East, Scott is working to develop new relationships to partner with the World Action Team business in Asia.