About New Directions Collaborative

Our Team

New Directions Collaborative is a New England-based team of consultants with skills in strategy, facilitation, systems change, networks, and collaborative leadership. We work as a partner, facilitator, guide, and coach to help our clients implement collaborative approaches to large scale change. We bring a depth of experience working within and across business, government, non-profit, and philanthropy sectors to implement sustainability and social change goals.  

The Collaborative is structured as a network, with a core team and a wider circle of affiliates that we bring together in unique combinations based on each client's needs. This flexible structure allows us to provide a collaborative team with a wide range of complementary skills. Also, with years of combined experience working on these issues in the region, we have relationships and connections to an exceptional network of resources, expertise, and organizations we can tap on behalf of our clients.

Beth Tener, Principal

Beth Tener, PresidentBeth Tener, Principal of New Directions Collaborative, is a facilitator, organizational consultant, and trainer with over 20 years of experience in helping organizations and networks to enhance their environmental and social responsibility performance. She specializes in helping people to collaborate across functions and organizations in pursuit of joint goals. This includes stakeholder engagement, strategic planning, mapping networks, and developing commitment, consensus and action plans to implement change. Her work is informed by broad experience in how organizational change happens, systems thinking, and sustainability issues, gained through work with over 100 companies, government agencies, foundations, and non-profits. Her skills in structured writing, graphics, and oral communication help clients clarify and generate alignment around a compelling argument for change.

In her previous role as Executive Director of Sustainable Step New England, she trained hundreds of people in principles of sustainability and how to put these into practice in their work. She helped internal “change agents” take leadership within their organization to adopt green practices and facilitated networks of change agents from government agencies, businesses, and non-profits. She also convened dialogues between sustainable business leaders and government about how government policies could help advance sustainable practices. Prior to that she was a Senior Consultant at Arthur D. Little, where she consulted with dozens of corporations in diverse industries to help them create strong internal management systems to deliver on their sustainability goals. She has been invited to give speeches on sustainability, strategy, and catalyzing networks for a wide range of audiences including MIT Sloan Business School, National Environmental Partnership Summit, the National Association of Environmental Trainers, and the NESEA Building Energy conference. She serves on the faculty of the Institute for Corporate Sustainability, a joint project of NH Business for Social Responsibility and University of New Hampshire Whittimore School of Business.

Beth has a B.A. in Political Science from Bates College and a M.S. in Environmental Technology from Imperial College in London and has a Permaculture Design Certificate. 

Patti Anklam

patti-anklamPatti Anklam has worked at the intersection of collaboration technologies and networks and communities for over 30 years. With roots in high-tech companies like Digital Equipment and Nortel and a knowledge management, writing and communication background, Patti is a master at helping people understand and apply technologies for collaboration and communication. She works at the executive level to help set strategy and select technologies and is equally comfortable and effective one-on-one helping people adapt and use technology to help them work more effectively.

Patti is also a widely recognized leader in the field of organizational/social network analysis (SNA/ONA) for knowledge management and is a frequent speaker, writer, and trainer on the topic. Her book, Net Work: A Practical Guide to Creating and Sustaining Networks at Work and in the World, was published by Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann in 2007. As an independent consultant specializing in ONA/SNA since 2001, Patti has supported dozens of projects for both commercial and nonprofit/NGO clients, including using SNA in the context of program evaluation for a UN organization (IFAD) that promotes solutions to rural poverty in Asia/Pacific.

A graduate of Beloit College, Beloit, WI with a Business Certificate from Smith College, Patti resides in Harvard, MA.

Pat Daniel, PhD

Pat_photo

Pat Daniel works as a consultant and trainer, supporting corporations and non-profits on strategic planning, communications, sustainability, organization development and executive coaching. In her previous position for seven years, she was the associate director of Ceres, a national network of investors and environmental groups working with companies and investors to address sustainability challenges. She interfaced with many Ceres companies, investors and stakeholder groups, and directed the annual Ceres Conference. She played a key role in the development and launch of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), and represented Ceres at the U.N. World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. As the chief operating officer, Pat managed finance, operations, human resources, board relations and strategic planning during a period when the organization more than doubled in size.

Before joining Ceres, Pat spent 11 years at Polaroid Corporation, where she served as worldwide training manager for Total Quality Management and corporate ethics and compliance. She led a re-engineering effort within product development and manufacturing to enhance and streamline design for the environment and product stewardship. She managed the company’s environmental training and participated in the development of Polaroid’s Ceres environmental report. As an internal consultant and coach, she advised executives and employees on organizational and team development for a variety of functions.

Nancy Gabriel

nancy gabriel_portraitNancy Gabriel is an experienced facilitator, leadership coach and designer of multi-stakeholder processes and learning environments that foster creative responses to today’s complex global challenges. Nancy’s whole systems approach encourages divergent perspectives and ways of knowing and helps individuals and groups develop the capacity to engage across difference, a key condition for the emergence of new ideas. As founder of Remembering Our Nature, Nancy works with partners to develop practices that integrate the wisdom and principles of natural systems into her work with clients.

At the Sustainability Institute, Nancy led the Donella Meadows Leadership Fellowship Program bringing together an international, diverse group of change leaders for four retreats designed to deepen their skills in systems thinking, reflective conversation, vision and engaging across difference. She co-led the Meadowlark Leadership Laboratory, a multi-stakeholder social innovation project aimed at regional and economic transformation in the Northern Great Plains. Recently, Nancy co-taught the Power, Privilege and Natural Resources course at the University of Vermont where students analyzed how privilege and power accrue in systems and can preference certain ways of knowing while marginalizing others.

Joel Gluck, MEd, RDT

joel_gluck_portraitJoel Gluck is an executive coach and leadership trainer with more than 15 years of experience. He has trained and coached leaders on four continents at organizations ranging from the Fortune 10 to local non-profits, as well as through his work with the executive education programs of Harvard Business School, Columbia, the Kellogg School of Management, Duke, and other institutions of higher education. Joel works with leaders to inspire action and organizational change, overcome obstacles, and attain personal fulfillment in work and life.

Joel leverages his unique background in business, the arts, and human behavior to deliver powerful insights for his clients. A conservatory-trained theater artist, Joel has directed and performed in professional productions throughout North America, with experience ranging from Shakespearean classics to improvisation. With his deep knowledge of the actor’s skill set, Joel has an exceptional ability to help clients communicate with clarity, warmth, and passion—to tell a compelling story with maximum impact. Joel also has an extensive background in psychology and human behavior, which is particularly useful working with organizations facing cynicism and resistance.

Dan Ruben

Dan RubenDan Ruben is a facilitator, consultant, and trainer with many years of hands-on experience advancing environmental change within organizations and through collaborative networks. As executive director of Boston Green Tourism, he is a catalyst for expanding the use of green practices in Greater Boston’s hotels and convention centers. Previously, Dan was the executive director of the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Conventions, where he coordinated a network of 200 non-profit, government and business professionals to plan, implement, and publicize environmental best practices at the 2004 Democratic and Republican National Conventions. CERC won the international Environmentally Responsible Meeting Award and two EPA Environmental Merit awards.

Dan has been a leader in advancing sustainable change at the local level as past president and current board member of the Green Decade / Newton, an environmental non-profit that advances environmental improvements in Newton households, businesses and schools. Dan was the Eastern Massachusetts Coordinator for the Global Action Plan's Household EcoTeam Program, where he coached 180 participants on 30 Household EcoTeams to live environmentally sustainable lifestyles. He also serves on the executive committee of the Mass Energy Consumers Alliance.

Dan speaks and writes on the subjects of green hospitality, global warming and environmentally sustainable lifestyles. He has advised the Environmental Protection Agency, Cotton Incorporated, Clear Channel Communications, Pioneer Investments, the Down to Earth Expo and the Energy Smackdown television show. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Dan is a passionate gardener, yoga practitioner, nature observer, swimmer and cross country skier.

The problems facing us in today's interconnected world can only be addressed through intelligent collaborative responses.

- Russell Linden