We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Denise Berger. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Denise below.

Alright, Denise thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Have you ever had an amazing boss? What did you learn from them? Maybe you can share a story that illustrates the kind of boss they were or maybe you can share your thoughts on what you think made them an awesome person to work for?

It is very fitting that I am telling this story today, on 9/11. I used to work in New York City for a large fortune 500 company in risk management. We were the global group that handled all the overseas insurance needs of multinationals. One day, my company merged with another company and they too had a global team. We knew of each other; being in global work was niche so our paths were always crossing with our competition. Our two teams had to merge, and their team was in charge, being the acquirer. Chris Gardner pulled us together for a meeting. My team didn’t know what to expect. For all we knew, they didn’t need us and we would all be laid off from this merger. Instead, he laid out a plan to fully integrate us. He set a vision for us. And he empowered all of us leaders -from both teams – to make this new merged, global group come alive. I was one of his senior leaders and he gave me a lot of leeway to implement talent management solutions, the likes of which did not exist at the time. From recruiting to onboarding to teaching, mentoring, succession planning and exiting, I was given permission to put together a state of the art employee life cycle strategy that engaged the entire team.

Chris believed in me. He believed in all of us. As his responsibilities grew, so did ours. He wasn’t afraid to spotlight those around him and to bring them along on his journey. He worked with interns and senior leaders, alike. He was good natured. Firm but fair-minded. He challenged us to our personal best, and we had an award winning team. He was a visionary, transformational leader. Authentic in how he showed up, charismatic, fun-loving, serious when he needed to be, knowledgeable, supportive, humble, and a wonderful role model and dad to two young boys. He loved his family and cared deeply about managing work-life. In August 2001, I distinctly remember him laying out his plan to travel to some meetings in September and then to not travel thereafter for a while to be with his family outside of the work day.

Sadly, on September 11th, he was a victim of the terrorist attack at the World Trade Center. I was in a meeting with him on the 103rd floor. I was facing the windows, along with two other colleagues. The rest of the team were not. They have since told the three of us that our faces went blank and our skin went white. The visual of watching a plane head right toward us in the sky is one I will never forget, nor will I ever stop thinking that someone else in the other tower had the same visual, but they didn’t survive. I rose to my feet immediately and told everyone that we needed to head to the lobby. Some colleagues were standing at the window. You could feel the heat and smell the gas. I ran back and told everyone I could from the meeting and those that were sitting internally that they needed to leave right now. “Vote with your feet” is something that comes to mind to me ever since. I escaped. There are no words to describe the heroism of Chris and the sadness I feel that he didn’t get to live out his plans with his family. He walked the entire floor telling everyone to go to the lobby. He saved the lives of at least two colleagues in the global group who were in an internal meeting and didn’t realize the severity of what had just happened. The World Trade Center was built to sustain a crash from a small cessna, but certainly not a large jet, full of gas. After walking the floor, he was making his way down and took an elevator. From what I was able to piece together, he was in one of the elevators whose wires were severed when the second plane hit our tower and went straight through the sky lobby.

I will never know what my career would have looked like if Chris had survived that day. I think I would have followed him for many years to come and stayed in the corporate arena. I think I might not have moved to California. I think I might not have gotten a doctorate in organizational leadership. I might not have become a consultant, a leadership coach, a professor or a jewelry designer and store owner. Who knows? Nobody does. Life takes us in directions, unwantingly, sometimes. What I do know is that I have not had a leader like Chris in my life since 9/11. He was my boss, but he was also a friend and a trusted advisor.

My company lost many wonderful people that day. I personally worked closely with about 50 of them. The months that followed were hard. We had to rebuild physically, emotionally, spiritually. I was among a few people that stepped into his shoes. He had a big team with several divisions reporting to him. There is no doubt that Chris’ ethos carried me forward. It carried all of us. We all even made a vow to ourselves that we would never let work and life get out of balance because nothing is more precious than the moment we have now with the ones we care about the most. I am very proud of how I led the team after 9/11. It was boots on the ground leadership. It was vulnerable leadership. It was also visionary leadership – bringing everyone along to a better tomorrow; at the same time, I created space for us all to grieve. Many of us are still connected today and also were instrumental leaders going forward. I admire the team that Chris built so much and for sure his legacy lives on in us every day. We have missed him all these years!

Denise, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am first and foremost an organizational consultant and leadership coach. And I am a professor in a master’s program for social entrepreneurship at Pepperdine’s Graduate School of Education and Psychology and I have also taught Leading Inclusive Organizations at the doctoral level at Vanderbilt University. I have a doctorate in organizational leadership, specializing in corporate social responsibility, and a MBA in marketing and international business. I am currently in a learning fellowship program at Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center Bridging Differences curriculum. I come alongside small-medium sized for profits and non-profits and advise them on strategic planning, operational effectiveness, organizational culture, team optimization, change management, and growth through purpose. I especially like to do vision, mission and values work with organizations to set them up with foundational guidance and principles that govern decision-making. I have also helped organizations with streamlining, impact design, go-to-market strategies, and honing the “how” they do what they do.

I also provide 1:1 and small group coaching to leaders and help them build resilience, mental acuity, agility and focus. I am PQ trained coach (soon to be certified) so I follow the Positive Intelligence coaching practice to help people strengthen their inner sage and minimize our internal saboteurs that get in the way of us reaching our full potential. I care about developing ethical, responsible, inclusive, adaptive leaders who create a thriving society for all, and I believe in the ancient greek proverb that a society grows great when old people plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit under.
Your can find me at www.alikiconsulting.com

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

For my jewelry company, I sell my products using shopify as the platform and I am also on Etsy. I also tried to sell on ebay, but their set up is very cumbersome, and my products are very specific so it was not effective to be on ebay. I also tried to set up on amazon, through the shopify feature, but that proved to be challenging too. (I’ve also heard that amazon takes ideas and makes “generic” versions of them. Once I heard that, I did not want to spend too much time figuring out how to be on amazon.) So, I settled on my own website through shopify and Etsy. I like both of these platforms. Shopify gives me total control on lay-out and has good extension apps to do things like build an ambassador program, if I choose, or set up customer reviews. It also allows for the full range of my customization – my products are made with cords and I offer them in a multitude of colors. Also, my customers choose the size they want, which can be nuanced.

While I can’t get all of my customization set up on Etsy, I love the ease of someone finding me there. So, I don’t have all of my designs set up in Etsy, but just enough – and some of my most popular items – to have a presence.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

I am a big fan of Brene Brown and Simon Sinek. Great leaders are vulnerable, authentic, humble, exhibit a high degree of relational intelligence, think about the long-game. We don’t have enough of these in the world, do we? I appreciate Brene and Simon because they have figured out how to commercialize these messages to reach a wider audience. I feel that I am connected with them and that we are trying to elevate the soul of leadership, one step at a time.

Contact Info:

• Website: alikiconsulting.com; alikidesigns.com
• Instagram: @alikiconsulting; @alikidesigns; @alikitravel
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dberger-alikiconsulting/
• Other: https://www.etsy.com/shop/AlikiDesign?ref=seller-platform-mcnav

Image Credits
Portrait pictures were taken by Ron Hall. Aliki Designs pictures were taken by me.