Instructor: Mary Chambers

NOTE: This seminar has been cancelled.

Course Description
A well-planned, engaging, inclusively designed, and effectively led retreat is perhaps the best way to address head-on some of the more challenging issues facing a board and the organization it governs. This practical, inter-active seminar will offer organization leaders ready-to-use tips, tools and step-by-step guidelines for planning a focused, productive, invigorating and engaging board retreat.

Instructor's Bio
Mary Chambers is an organizational management, public affairs and strategic communications consultant with special expertise in the area of launching and leading community, philanthropic and corporate organizations, trade associations and peer learning circles. She has worked to organize and initiate several successful non-profit, philanthropic and advocacy organizations including LEARN (Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now), the New Los Angeles Marketing Partnership, the Professional Business Council of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project, the Los Angeles Business Advisors and the LAAMP/LEARN Regional School Reform Alliance.

For over a decade, The Chambers Consulting Group led by Ms. Chambers, has been devoted to working with nonprofit organizations, public agencies, and foundations. Drawing upon an experienced team of in-house consultants, The Chambers Consulting Group offers a broad range of organizational development, strategic planning, facilitation, meeting design and implementation, planning, and analysis services individually tailored to the needs of each client.

The Chambers Consulting Group meetings, retreats and events are known for their attention to detail, focus on tangible results, high level of participant engagement and, personalization.

As Director of Community Relations at the California Community Foundation, Ms. Chambers created and lead a highly acclaimed peer learning series for nonprofit leaders throughout the Los Angeles area and served as Managing Director of The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's work to create small high schools in the Los Angeles region.

She served as Executive Vice President and President & CEO of LEARN (Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now) a non-profit community organization formed in 1991 to engage leaders from every corner of the diverse Los Angeles community in an education reform dialogue of unprecedented scope. This effort resulted in community-wide consensus around a blueprint for a fully restructured Los Angeles public school system. Since its adoption in 1991, the LEARN plan has been widely heralded as the most far reaching and innovative education reform plan in the country.

At the request of former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, Ms. Chambers launched the New Los Angeles Marketing Partnership (NewLAMP), a California 501 (c) (6) business advocacy corporation. This $20 million effort of L.A.'s corporate and economic development communities was created to promote a positive image of the Los Angeles region as a place to live, work and invest.

Ms. Chambers was tapped to organize and launch the Los Angeles Business Advisors, an organization of CEO's representing the largest companies in the Los Angeles region who came together to mobilize their resources behind a focused agenda aimed at improving the economic environment of the Los Angeles region.

In addition, Ms. Chambers works with numerous non-profit, for-profit and foundation Boards of Directors assisting them to become more effective.

An attorney with a background in legislative and political strategy, strategic planning, consensus building, mediation, peer learning, public affairs, community relations, media relations and communications, Ms. Chambers served three years as Vice President of Robinson, Lake, Lerer & Montgomery, a strategic communications firm in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining this firm, she held the positions of Chief of Staff to both U.S. Congressman Robert T. Matsui, (D-Sacramento) and California State Assembly Speaker Pro Tempore, Mike Roos (D-Los Angeles).

A dynamic, energetic, motivational speaker, strategic planner and team-builder, Ms. Chambers' presentation, organizational planning, public relations, community affairs, facilitation, board/organizational development, political strategy and mediation skills are in demand by top corporate, political, philanthropic and community leaders across the nation.

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