The Team
Heidi is an experienced leader with a track record in transforming individuals, teams and organizations, both as executive director, developmental coach and as external facilitator and consultant. Heidi has a background in IT and strategic marketing. She served as a CEO for a digital service design agency, undertaking a successful transformation, prior to co-founding Amara Collaboration. Amara is an international consultancy and social enterprise founded in 2014. In Amara Heidi works mainly with organizational transformation on three levels, the individual, team and the systemic level. She is known for her attentive listening and presence and the energy she brings to any intervention. She is fluent is the top executive environment as well as sensitive to pick up the subtle, somatic dimensions. Heidi is an expert of adult development and part of the team certifying coaches and consultants to use the Global Leadership Profile. She is a certified executive coach and has the right to use the Leadership Circle 360.
In addition to her work in Amara, she serves as the Chair or the Advisory Board for two self-managed/Teal organisations, is a frequent speaker at international Business Forums, is the country manager in Finland for Women’s Board Award and an author of the book Street Smart Awareness and Inquiry-in-Action.
Heidi Gutekunst
Joel Yanowitz is a leading consultant, executive coach and senior advisor renowned for his ability to help leaders accelerate progress on critical business challenges through leveraging the human side of their organization.
Over the past thirty years, he has helped countless business leaders drive growth, improve innovation, and build cultures capable of extraordinary performance.
Joel has hands-on experience launching and running companies. He was the co-founder and managing director of Innovation Associates, the firm that brought the prestigious work of Peter Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline, to companies worldwide, and pioneered the field of Organizational Learning.
As a Vice President of Arthur D. Little, a global management consulting and technology development company, he led their Organization Practice and co-led their Strategy Practice. Joel has served on a number of corporate and non-profit Boards, including The African Food and Peace Foundation, CorStone, and Upstart Bay Area.
Joel is a graduate of Columbia University’s Advanced Program in Organizational Development and Human Resources Management. He lives outside of San Francisco where he enjoys mountain biking, playing guitar and holds a fourth-degree black belt in Aikido.
Joel Yanowitz
Heidi, Joel and Dana
Jesse McKay
Jesse majored in psychology, has an MBA in corporate strategy, and trained in software design, development and architecture. He has worked as an engineer with a team of scientists responsible for designing and building communications systems for the International Space Station, and as a management consultant helping leaders achieve greater impact on the individual, team and organisational levels. Jesse has been designing and delivering integral leadership programs for 14 years.
Jesse has a broad inter-cultural background with professional engagements in Germany, Russia, Australia, Spain, USA, Sweden, Korea, Canada, Ethiopia, Estonia and Brazil.
Matt Cesaro
Matt Cesaro is passionate about working with individuals, groups and organisations to increase awareness, impact and performance through people development, change leadership and strategic facilitation. He loves to work with other people who are passionate about what they do, to support them to make the shifts they need to have the impact they want.
His operational and leadership experience developed over 20 years in SA Health and Country Health SA. Working both centrally and in regional teams, he successfully led many change and reform programs in Organisational Development, Health Service Operations, Finance, Information Technology, Business Systems and Project Management.
Matt has a range of qualifications and certifications to support this lived experience, including Management, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Embodied Practitioner (Integral Theory), The Leadership Circle (TLC), Advanced (Gestalt) Facilitation, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and as a Resilience Skills master trainer. Matt is a busy cricket coach, an uber-driver/Dad, and a gifted teller of Dad jokes, according to him.
Danielle Conroy
Susanna Carman
Susanna Carman is a Strategic Designer specialising in leadership, learning and design for a rapidly changing world. She works with practitioners and consultants who are committed to fulfilling potential in others. She also supports educational leaders and their teams to transform complex challenges into practical opportunities for learning, growth and innovation.
With a masters degree in Design Futures, Susanna joins a select cohort of research-practitioners in the emergent field of Transition Design - a trans-disciplinary approach to learning, leadership and problem solving that advocates for, "design led societal transition toward more sustainable futures" (Irwin, Kossoff & Tonkinwise). Susanna's research and client work has generated a high value toolkit that draws from Futures Thinking, Systems, Complexity, Embodiment and Integral Theories, Vertical Leadership Development and Speculative Design to support design led leadership amidst VUCA conditions.
She holds degrees in Geology, Music and Education, as well as an advanced diploma in Holistic Counselling. She is also certified as a MetaIntegral Embodied Practitioner with over a decade of combined experience facilitating business performance, cultural alignment and leadership development outcomes for the education, health, community development and financial services sectors.
Prior to her consulting efforts, Susanna was a musician, songwriter, recording artist and music teacher who lectured at Southern Cross University and performed at Australia’s top festivals. Her design expertise is grounded in fifteen years of collaborative artistry, live performance, music education and creative entrepreneurship.
Danielle Conroy is a specialist in transformation leadership, coaching and organizational change. With over 25 years working in a large multi-national company, and experience running her own consulting businesses, Danielle understands the complexity, challenges and rewards of working in organizations of all sizes and stages of growth. Her clients value her creativity, integral thinking, emotional intelligence, focus on results and partnership approach. With a deep commitment to meditation and her own personal development, she guides and supports leaders to unlock and accelerate powerful mental, emotional and relational capacities that support them in navigating the complexity of today’s world and have a greater impact in their organizations. Danielle has a graduate degree in Business & Leadership from Curtin University in Australia.
Jacob Kann
Jacob has spent the past 30+ years working as an Aquatic Ecologist researching the inter-connectedness of organisms and their river and lake environments. Simultaneous to this career, he delved into his own connectedness to the natural word, experiencing the deep space that wilderness (wildness) fosters, allowing masks to fall way and layers to shed, revealing a deeper peace, and a deeper truth. Through this connectedness and love of the natural world was borne a natural inquiry into the potent questions arising in life. This inquiry is informed by personal inquiry work with a variety of teachers over many years, as well as by the wildness of nature, tapping into the profound transmission and innate wisdom emanating from the still- yet wild and uncontrollable aspects of nature. It brings Jacob great joy to serve as a guide and to support the natural unfolding of inquiry into the nature and resolution of whatever potent personal or collective issues are arising.
In addition to obtaining a B.A from Rutgers University, an M.S. from University of Idaho, and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Jacob attended the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), has over 40 years of experience playing in wilderness, has guided wilderness trips, and facilitated numerous inquiry circles as well as rites of passage/mentoring groups for youth.
Support Team
Johanna Hobart Crane
Johanna Hobart Crane has been working with Dana Carman Integral Consulting for over five years. She is currently responsible for managing an array of tasks ranging from client communications, organizational duties, technological support, billing, scheduling, implementation, and management of The Leadership Circle projects.
Johanna received a BA from Western Washington University where she focused on marine bird population research and learned large dataset management.
Her previous experience includes 15 years in customer service and as manager and supply buyer for an outdoor retail store.
Outside of work Johanna spends her time with her family biking, skiing, backpacking and traveling.