BOSWELL GROUP - Key Persons
Alexander Stein is an expert in human decision-making and behavior, and serves as an advisor to CEOs, senior management teams and boards. Trained and licensed as a psychoanalyst, he advises executives, founders and directors across a broad array of industries on issues involving leadership, culture, governance, ethics, risk, and other organizational matters with complex psychological underpinnings.
He is the Founder and Managing Principal of Dolus Advisors, a bespoke consultancy founded in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks to help business leaders address psychologically complex enterprise challenges beyond the capabilities of conventional business consulting. He is also a Principal in the Boswell Group, a psychodynamic management consulting group.
In addition to his advisory work in organizational leadership, culture and governance, Dr Stein is an internationally regarded authority in human risk and the psychodynamics of fraud. He is frequently engaged as a specialist advisor in multijurisdictional serious fraud and grand corruption matters and also helps companies mitigate and address challenging institutional disturbances such as human factor vulnerabilities in cybersecurity and executive misconduct.
A passionate advocate for ethical and socially responsible technologies, Dr Stein sits on the advisory boards of several technology firms and also consults to companies that develop and deliver human-centered technologies-applications and services that assume decision-making functions in human affairs without human involvement or supervision-to mitigate unintended consequences to people, organizations and society.
Dr Stein is widely published and cited in the business press and varied industry publications, including Fast Company, INC, Financier Worldwide, Risk & Compliance, the Wall Street Journal, The FraudNet Report, among many others. A former monthly columnist for Fortune Small Business Magazine, CNN/Money, and CBS Business News covering the psychology of leadership and entrepreneurship, he currently contributes his expertise to Forbes focusing on the psychology of decision-making and unintended consequences in organizations and society.
An engaging and experienced public speaker adept at explaining complicated topics clearly and compellingly for any audience, Dr Stein is a frequent podcast and webinar guest, on-camera commentator, and keynote speaker and panelist at industry conferences and corporate events internationally.
Dr Stein was a conservatory-trained professional pianist. He gave his first piano recital at age 11 and concertized as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States and Europe until leaving his musical career to pursue graduate study at New School University and psychoanalytic training at the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis in NY where he is a senior member.
Ana Perea is an executive coach and organization development consultant with a proven track record for the design and implementation of effective people solutions. She is a strategic thinker and partner specializing in the understanding of people, systems, and organizational structures with over ten years' experience in both the corporate and non-profit sectors.
Ana has worked across a wide range of industries, including financial services, luxury, start-ups, education, legal, marketing, high tech and design. She has worked closely with senior executives and emerging leaders supporting an array of initiatives, including organizational restructuring, leadership development, and complex change management strategy. As an executive coach, Ana has worked extensively with C-level and senior executives at times of critical change and potential, equally facilitating the growth of the individual and supporting the needs of the business. Ana has particular, in-depth experience with family, founder led organizations, and creative, entrepreneurial environments. She specializes in situations where deep, multifaceted challenges meet with the opportunity for lasting transformation and growth. She is especially adept at working with complex individual and group dynamics that impact the long term potential of the organization.
Prior to starting her consulting and coaching practice, Ana was the creator and director of the organizational effectiveness function at the luxury brand, David Yurman. She advised the Executive Committee - working both individually and with groups - executing people management and employee engagement strategies across every area of the business. These included the creation of a Change Management program, the development of a Learning and Development function and key interventions effecting long term cultural change. Before Yurman, Ana worked as a Learning and Development consultant leading the creation and development of learning strategies for small and mid-sized organizations.
Ana's unique approach to systems and people is guided by her knowledge of business and psychodynamic, interpersonal issues. Her blend of clinical experience and organizational acumen provides her with a unique vantage point suited to effectively address the multiply-determined challenges that businesses face.
Ana holds a Master's Degree from Columbia University and is in the late stages of a Doctorate in Psychoanalysis at the New York Graduate School of Psychoanalysis.
Annie Marks has twenty years of consulting experience in the areas of organizational development, change management, learning and development and executive development. She has worked in a wide range of industries, including media, health care, financial services, luxury fashion, construction, non-profit, education, publishing, high tech and pharmaceuticals. She has supported organizations going through a wide spectrum of business contexts, including, high-speed growth, organizational restructuring, strategic change and technology implementation. Annie has worked with small-to-midsized family-owned businesses and large multi-national organizations, having spent four years based in London and working across Europe.
Annie has designed, implemented and led comprehensive programs to support change at the individual, team and organizational levels. She applies her knowledge and experience of organizational systems, large-scale change, group dynamics, advanced facilitation and project management skills to help organizations make real change. Annie is adept at working with individuals and teams to uncover important and conflicting assumptions and thinking that can block learning and change, a fundamental process in healthy organizational life. She is particularly interested in helping groups and executives function when faced with important, multi-layered decisions, complex authority structures, competing interests and interpersonal and group dynamics.
Annie worked for Arthur Andersen's Business Consulting ‘Strategy, Organization and People' practice for eight years in New York and London. For the past twelve years, Annie has been working as an independent consultant and executive advisor based in New York City, her hometown.
Annie has received her MBA in Management/Marketing at New York University's Stern School of Business and her MA in Organizational Psychology at Columbia University's Teachers College. She is a Principal with the Boswell Group, Associate Faculty for Action Design and affiliated with Mobius Executive Leadership and Crenshaw Associates. Annie is a graduate and former faculty member of the Organization Program at the William Alanson White Institute in New York. She has been regular guest faculty in the Columbia Business School MBA and Executive Education programs.
Dr. Steve Axelrod assists business leaders to optimize their talents, skills and values to enable both individual and organizational success.
Steve specializes in coaching top executives to build more effective relationships and better motivate and energize their people. The key to Steve's effectiveness as a coach is his ability to link individual executive growth to organizational change.
In each assignment, Steve evaluates the organizational context and tailors his coaching to align the needs of the executive with his or her organizational goals. Steve's strengths as a "quick study" and comfort with technical business subjects allow him to add value at a high level of understanding.
Where organizational change is needed to support or extend the executive's agenda, Steve is an experienced and savvy consultant. He has facilitated team-building retreats for senior leaders and helped develop leadership competency models. He has led organizational culture change initiatives and provided expert advice on sensitive situations, such as substance abuse and sexual harrassment. One of Steve's gifts is facilitating succession planning and transition.
As an executive coach, Steve has worked with leaders in a range of companies, from middle-market to the Fortune 50. Clients include BMG Entertainment; Bear Sterns; Burberry; Discovery Networks; Hearst Corporation; International Center of Photography; JP Morgan Chase; MTV Networks; New York Times; Paramount TV; Prudential Financial; Schering-Plough; and UBS.
Steve holds a Ph.D. in psychology from New York University and has 25 years of assessment and counseling experience. He is a respected teacher in the field of psychology and has traveled throughout the country to lecture on adult development and the psychology of work at the executive level.
Dr. Axelrod is recognized as an expert on the powerful influence of a leader's psychological dynamics on organizational performance. His book, Work and the Evolving Self (1999, Analytic Press), was chosen as a selection by the Behavioral Science Book Club. He wrote Executive Growth Along the Adult Development Curve as a chapter in The Wisdom of Coaching (2007, APA Books). He also has appeared on radio and has been quoted in The New York Times and Harvard Business Review.
Dr. Shapiro is the Former Medical Director/CEO of the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, MA. A board certified psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, family researcher, and organizational consultant, he is also Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine. An organizational consultant for over thirty-five years, Dr. Shapiro has consulted with hospitals, mental health clinics, law firms, and family businesses, focusing on organizational transition, mergers, organizational structure and the dilemmas of authority, management and delegation. He has coached executives in health care, law, education and business.
Author of Finding a Place to Stand: Developing Self-Reflective Institutions, Leaders, and Citizen s (Phoenix, 2019), and co-author (with A. Wesley Carr, Ph.D., Former Dean of Westminster) of Lost in Familiar Places: Creating New Connections between the Individual and Society (Yale, 1991), Dr. Shapiro is also the editor of The Inner World in the Outer World (Yale, 1997). He has published over fifty articles and book chapters on human development, organizational and family functioning, and personality disorders, presenting papers in the country and abroad. A Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, he is also a Fellow of the A.K. Rice Institute and the American College of Psychoanalysis. He is on the Boards of CSGSS (Center for Groups and Social Systems, the Boston Center of the A.K. Rice Institute) and IDI (International Dialogue Initiative), and on the Advisory Board of PCCA (Partners Confronting Collective Atrocities). He is a Principal in the Boswell Group of New York.
Dr. Shapiro has received the Felix and Helene Deutsch Scientific Award from the Boston Psychoanalytic Society, the Research Prize from the Society for Family Therapy and Research, and the Philip Isenberg Teaching Award from McLean Hospital. In 2007, he was named Outstanding Psychiatrist for Advancement of the Profession by the Massachusetts Psychiatric Association and is named in US News & World Report's list of "Top Doctors'.
Dr. Shapiro graduated from Yale College, received an M.A. in Anthropology from Stanford University, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and Certification in Psychoanalysis from the American Psychoanalytic Association. A graduate of the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, Dr. Shapiro was a Clinical Associate at the Adult Psychiatry Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health. At McLean Hospital in Boston, he was Founder and Director of the Adolescent and Family Treatment and Study Center and Director of Psychosocial Training and Consultation. Dr. Shapiro is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Berkshire Psychoanalytic Institute.
Kenneth Eisold, Ph.D., a psychologist and psychoanalyst, has been consulting to management dilemmas for a number of years. In addition to having a deep understanding of individual behavior, honed through his extensive counseling and coaching practice with executives and leaders, he has a wide understanding of the complexities of system-wide behavior, both overt and covert, affecting the ability of organizations to address their missions.
Currently President of the William Alanson White Institute In New York City, he previously served as President of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations. For several years he directed the A. K. Rice Institute's National Conference, devoted to the study of leadership, authority, and organizational dynamics. He has also worked on conferences designed to help managers grasp the complex dynamics of systems in New York, Washington, Chicago, Houston, St. Louis, and Seattle. Abroad he has worked on training events sponsored by The Tavistock Institute (London), The Grubb Institute (London), The Bayswater Institute (London), The Australian Institute for Socio-Analysis (Melbourne), Il Nodo (Italy), and OFEK (Israel).
In 2010, he published What You Don't Know Your Know, a review of unconscious dynamics in individual, group and organizational settings, as understood in psychoanalytic theory and updated by more recent neuropsychological research. 2017 saw the publication of his collected papers on The Organizational Life of Psychoanalysis. (La Psicoanalisi e le sue Instituzioni was published two years earlier in Italy.) He has worked extensively with professional organizations, hospitals, university schools and departments, law firms, and training institutes. He has coached leaders in the financial industry, public health, law, and higher education.
He also lectures extensively on the complex and often deeply hidden conflicts that affect organizations and businesses. He was featured in a special supplement of the Wall Street Journal on Corporate Governance.
His papers and commentaries have focused recently on the psychodynamics of leadership and organizations, and have been published in such journals as the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, Human Relations, Psychoanalytic Psychology, Contemporary Psychoanalysis, The Journal of Analytical Psychology. They have also been on such diverse topics as dreams, literature and psychoanalysis, theories of group behavior, corporate greed and the impact of our growing income inequality.
In addition to his doctorate in Clinical Psychology and his certificate in Psychoanalysis, he holds a doctorate in English and Comparative Literature.
Job Titles:
- Principal
- Psychiatrist
- Psychoanalyst
Kenneth M Settel, M.D. is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who works with businesses and organizations to develop leadership success, resolve organizational conflicts and promote operational effectiveness through enhancing understanding and addressing the challenges of growth, change and work effectiveness.
He is the author of: CEO PSYCHOLOGY; Who Rises, Who Falls, and Why (Harvard Medical School Guide, 2014).
He is currently a member of the Boswell Group, a psychoanalytic organizational consultation group. He consults to Leaders, Teams, Boards, and to businesses both large and small, from large corporations, to start ups, to family businesses.. He has assisted with leadership transitions, and worked to create more effective leadership teams, through strategic focus, communication and deeper awareness of individual and organizational dynamics and processes.
For over 25 years he has worked with Harvard Risk Management, supporting physicians and their organizations through managing adverse outcomes and malpractice litigation.
Prior to the Boswell Group, Dr. Settel worked as an associate at the Levinson Institute, anorganizational consulting and executive education group where he taught leadership development and consulted to executives and their teams. He participated in the development of a program on Work Family Balance with the Center for Creative Leadership.
He was a principal and cofounder of Spectrum, OED, Inc., a management and professional development consulting firm and also helped develop the Center for Physician Development, consulting to physicians and their organizations around management issues and personal career development.
He is currently on the faculty of the Psychoanalytic Institute of New England. He established and was Chairman of the Committee on Corporate and Organizational Consultation of the American Psychoanalytic Association where he has arranged workshops for psychoanalysts interested in organizational consultation.
Dr. Settel currently teaches a course in Leadership development to fourth year psychiatry residents at the Harvard-Longwood residency program.
Dr. Settel graduated from Columbia College in New York as well as Dartmouth Medical School and the University of Washington Medical School. He is a Clinical Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
Kerry J. Sulkowicz, MD serves as a trusted advisor on people and culture to some of the world's most well-known and respected CEOs and corporate boards. He is the founder and Managing Principal of the Boswell Group LLC, a management consultancy based in New York since 1998. Dr. Sulkowicz is Past-President of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
Trained as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Dr. Sulkowicz advises on a range of issues including leadership challenges, CEO succession, management team and board dynamics, merger and acquisition integration, high-stakes hiring assessments, and corporate culture change. In addition to coaching CEOs and senior teams, he counsels boards in a wide array of industries, from startups to family-controlled enterprises to the Fortune 500. He is also a Senior Advisor to the CEO & Board Practice of Heidrick & Struggles, a global executive search firm.
Dr. Sulkowicz is often cited in the press, including the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times and Washington Post, and was a regular columnist in Business Week and Fast Company magazines, having written more than seventy columns on the psychology of business.His landmark article, "Worse than Enemies: The CEO's Destructive Confidant," was published in the Harvard Business Review in 2004.
Dr. Sulkowicz is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Texas Medical Branch. He was a Resident and Chief Resident in Psychiatry at New York University Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital. He is now a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine, where he received the Distinguished Teacher Award. He also received the Edith Sabshin Teaching Award from the American Psychoanalytic Association. A passionate advocate for human rights, Dr. Sulkowicz is the past chair of the board of Physicians for Human Rights, a global human rights organization that shared in the Nobel Peace Prize, and serves on the Advisory Council of Acumen.
Dr. Stevens advises CEOs, senior executives, management teams and boards of directors, helping them understand and act upon the deeper psychological factors in effective leadership that can determine the success or failure of their business. She provides advice in managing different personality styles so that executives can work together more collaboratively. She works with management teams in public and private companies, assisting with succession planning and leadership transitions, as well as in the resolution of interpersonal conflicts in organizations. She has special expertise working with companies going through stressful periods, such as changes in leadership, illness in a member of the leadership team, and times of rapid growth or change.
Dr. Stevens also has a private clinical psychiatric practice in which she treats adults with mood disorders, personality disorders and anxiety disorders. She has a special interest and specialized training in treating patients with psychiatric problems related to medical and surgical illnesses. She also has worked as the psychiatric consultant to various medical and surgical services at New York Presbyterian Medical Center. She does clinical research at the interface of psychiatry and medical illness and has authored numerous articles and book chapters in this domain. Dr. Stevens is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and teaches medical students about the psychological aspects of medical and surgical illness. She has also been a member of the teaching faculty of the forensic psychiatry fellowship at Columbia and Cornell.
Dr. Stevens received a B.A. from Yale College and an M.D. from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. She was awarded the Allan O. Whipple Prize in Surgery in 1979, the American Psychiatric Association Resident Research Prize in 1983 and the Aesthetic Surgery Association Certificate of Merit for Research in 1983. She completed her internship in general surgery at the Harvard Surgical Service and a residency in psychiatry at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. She did fellowship training in consultation-liaison psychiatry at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center.
Job Titles:
- Principal
- Organizational Psychologist Focusing on Executive
Marcie Elias is an organizational psychologist focusing on executive coaching, leadership development and consultation with senior management teams. Drawing on her training in individual and organizational psychology and psychoanalysis, Marcie utilizes her knowledge of internal, interpersonal and group dynamics to help organizations achieve optimal performance through their people. Her previous experience as a practicing attorney enables her to bring an analytical and solution-oriented perspective to complex organizational matters.
Marcie has worked with groups and individuals across a diverse spectrum of industries. She has worked extensively with pharmaceutical, financial, manufacturing, media and entertainment and technology companies. In her leadership coaching practice, she has worked with business leaders and senior executives on developing their repertoire of leadership and management competencies, as well as on defining and achieving their professional aspirations. She also works with top executives who are leading their organizations through periods of significant growth and change. Marcie attributes success in her coaching work to her strongly-held philosophy that every executive coaching program must be grounded in sound data about the individual and the organization and must be inextricably linked to current business objectives.
Her leadership development experience is in designing programs to cultivate top talent in organizations through the use of ongoing, highly focused interactive learning processes that attend to individual, interdepartmental and organizational dynamics. Marcie's hallmark in her leadership development programs is the use of a facilitated peer consultation process, which builds effective problem solving, decision-making, collaboration and communication skills while simultaneously providing the organization with a sustainable mechanism for addressing organizational and business challenges in real time.
Marcie holds a Masters degree in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University, a law degree from New York University School of Law, and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Emory University. She is presently completing her psychoanalytic training at the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis.
Job Titles:
- Executive
- Principal
- Managing Principal of Merion Advisory Group LLC
Steven S. Rolfe M.D. is Managing Principal of Merion Advisory Group LLC, a Philadelphia area consulting firm based on creating solutions to complex leadership challenges, management conflicts, and leadership transitions. Addressing the most personal and interpersonal dimensions of business life, Merion works to develop self-reflective, adaptive, CEO's, leaders and teams.
In founding Merion Dr. Rolfe has combined a unique set of experiences-medical, psychiatric, and psychoanalytic training, senior administrative position in a corporate health care environment, family business advising, clinical work with executives at all levels of the corporation, and individual and team coaching with an international focus-to create a consulting practice which addresses a leader's core emotional concerns, often the main drivers of organizational and business decisions. His approach offers his clients a trusted confident who engages them in practical conversations on the dynamics and challenges of leadership and other aspects of corporate life that often cannot be discussed with anyone else inside or outside the organization. His primary expertise in human behavior, motivation and conflict management encourages leaders to be more effective and productive by enabling them to better understand and reflect on their priorities and behaviors. Merion works to develop the psychological acumen of top management as they lead, strategize, and negotiate on behalf of their company.
Dr. Rolfe is an Executive Coach in the Wharton Leadership Program, Executive Coaching and Feedback Program. He has been Senior Associate for the Kets de Vries Institute based in Paris and London. His global consulting experience includes coaching for the World Economic Forum's Global Leadership Fellows Program. He has been a group executive coach for NGO's with Insead's Global Leadership Center(IGLC). In his work with CEOs he facilitates a three times yearly retreat for executives in the business media space. He works in association with The Tomorrow Group and Jacobs Law Group conducting board evaluations for public and private companies.
Dr. Rolfe earned his Certificate in Family Business Advising from The Family Firm Institute(FFI)and is a board member of FFI Mid-Atlantic Chapter. He is Co-Chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association's Committee on Corporate and Organizational Consultation. He is a member of the the Board of Trustees of the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia.
He has been Principal of the Boswell Group LLC for the last ten years. In this role he advises CEO's, corporate directors and other senior business leaders on psychological and interpersonal aspects of management and leadership. He has worked with investment professionals, equity, derivative and bond traders, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, corporate attorneys, and leaders of nonprofit institutions. His clientele represent a wide range of fields, including finance, real estate, law, entertainment, medicine, engineering and pharmaceuticals. A current focus has been working in the health care sector coaching physicians and executives in health care and pharmaceutical companies and start-ups with a medical focus.
Dr. Rolfe received his B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Pennsylvania and his M.D. at Tufts University School of Medicine. He completed Adult Psychiatry training at Tufts University Affiliated Hospitals, and a Child Psychiatry Fellowship at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, where he was Clinical Instructor in Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. He completed psychoanalytic training at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, where he is currently a faculty member. He was previously Director of the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia's Adult Psychotherapy Program and Division of Consultation and Evaluation Services. He is a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the American Medical Association.