Michael Forlenza

Senior Consultant and Lead by Greatness® Coach

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About

Michael Forlenza is a senior consultant with Lapin International. As an experienced leader, international leadership consultant, and leadership development coach, Michael has worked extensively with executive and emerging leaders across a wide variety of corporate and economic sectors, including financial services, legal services, biotechnology, healthcare, engineering, start-up, and higher education. His focus is on building and expanding the leadership competency, character, and capacity of his clients for leading in complex, uncertain, and highly changeable work environments.

Michael distills theories from transformational consulting, organizational design, change leadership and management, transformational learning and adult development, mindfulness and mental training, positive psychology and neuroscience, and systems thinking for complex adaptive systems in the purposeful development of organizational leaders.

Prior to becoming a full-time consultant, coach, and facilitator, Michael served as Assistant Dean in the School of Leadership and Professional Advancement at Duquesne University, where he gained practical, real-world experience managing and leading a highly complex and dynamic organization. In this capacity, he initiated, founded, and taught in the Professional Coach Certification Program (PCCP), an International Coach Federation Accredited Coach Training Program, also serving as its Executive Director. Additionally, he designed and delivered leadership courses as a part of the University graduate leadership faculty. This rare combination of knowledge tempered by experience enables Michael to create and facilitate challenging and effective developmental engagements.

As a coach, Michael helps leaders to successfully create and align personal and professional vision, lead organizational change and manage interpersonal conflict, transition to larger and more influential roles, inspire team members and colleagues to collaborate more effectively, see and balance multiple conflicting perspectives, and persistently innovate new and sustainable solutions. Clients report a deeper sense of engagement along with superior results. Michael holds a B.A. in Psychology (Magna Cum Laude) from Hunter College-City University of New York, an M.S. and PhD in Health Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh, and an MPH from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has served on faculties at Simon Fraser University, Duquesne University, Duke University Summer Academy, and the Carnegie Bosch Institute Global Leadership Executive Forum at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a graduate of the Professional Coach Certification Program at Duquesne University and a certified Lead by Greatness™ Coach.  He has training in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction with Jon Kabat Zinn, Mindfulness-Based Emotional Intelligence Training with the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, and Corporate-Based Mindfulness Training with The Potential Project. He also has advanced training in developmental coaching through the Center for Leadership Maturity, Coaches Rising, and Growth Edge Coaching and Transformational Consulting through Mobius Executive Leadership.