Who We Are

Dr. Elizabeth Berney

Dr. Berney is President of Berney Associates, an organization development and management training company. Berney Associates consults to organizations on organizational change, team building, conflict resolution and interests-based negotiation for the past 20 years.

Selected clients include: Agency for International Development, American Red Cross, American Resort Development Association, AT & T, Fannie Mae, Internal Revenue Service, International Dairy Food Association, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Marriott Corporation, MCI Telecommunications Corporation, National Institutes of Health, Public Welfare Foundation, Raytheon Corporation, State of the Art, Inc., U.S. Departments of Commerce, Education, Treasury, Veteran Affairs; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. House of Representatives.

Dr. Berney has taught for the Accelerated MBA Program at George Washington University, Executive Programs at the University of Maryland’s School of Business and Management, and for the Office of Continuing and Extended Education at the University of Maryland. She developed and for five years, directed, the Organization Development Certificate Program at Georgetown University. In addition, she has taught management courses for the American Management Association. She was also a tenure track Professor of Organizational Psychology at George Mason University.

Dr. Berney received a B.A. in Psychology from Yale University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Maryland. She earned a Teaching Excellence Award as a graduate student from the University of Maryland and a Psychology Award at Yale University.

She has specific expertise in the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and its application to leadership, teams and organizational change and conflict. She has worked with groups including Tropicana, Quaker Oats, Marriott; a variety of national associations; many federal agencies and foundations using the Myers Briggs to enhance intrapersonal, interpersonal, group and intergroup communication and effectiveness.

Liz also facilitates group meetings and retreats and works with many scientists and technical experts from all over the world. She worked with malaria experts at the Gates Foundation and H1N1 experts at the National Institutes of Health.

She also does a great deal of public speaking at local and national meetings and has spoken for groups including: National Council for State Housing Agencies, Thomson Prometric, Dun & Bradstreet, Coca Cola, Fannie Mae, the U.S. House of Representatives, Baldrige Quality group and Starwood Hotels.

Dr. Joseph Mancini, Jr.

Joseph Mancini, Jr., Ph.D., M.S.O.D. (Organization Development), CCHt., M.S.W., is an Executive and Professional Coach and an organization consultant focusing on leadership development, conflict resolution, organization change, team-building and diversity. He provides organization consultation, management training, and public presentations on all the above topics.

In his work with leaders and teams, he is able to tap both his organization skills and training as an organization development consultant and his clinical skills as a former, private-practice counselor to improve individual and team effectiveness. His significant expertise as both a facilitator of a wide range of teams and an instructor in group dynamics has helped teams significantly improve the effectiveness of their communication and decision-making processes as well as their ability to manage internal and external conflict. He is widely sought after as a process consultant to help teams ameliorate the significant challenges they experience which impede their work tasks. Selected clients include AT&T, CIA, Clark Construction, Logicon, Department of Commerce, National Institutes of Health, Environmental Protection Agency, Public Welfare Foundation, and the Veteran’s Administration. (For others, see “Selected Clients” below.) He has been a faculty member in the George Washington University Accelerated MBA Program and in the University of Maryland School for Summer and Extended Education. He is currently a faculty member for the Office of Executive Programs in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland. In these institutions, he has taught courses in leadership development, group dynamics and conflict resolution.

His background and skills in group dynamics combined with his doctoral training in and teaching of literature (as an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland and several other institutions) led to his creation of RoundTable Theatre for Business (RTT). This creative modality, a tool for personal, professional and corporate change, combines fun with seriousness in an improvisational format. RTT’s purpose is to help individuals and groups get out of stuck places by imagining and playing out new possibilities.

Joe also facilitates a variety of training programs on leadership and career development, using, in addition to more traditional modalities, stories, archetypal schemas, drawing, journaling, and other creative arts. A few years ago, Dr. Mancini added another creative modality, hypnosis, to help facilitate the emergence of new possibilities in an individual’s outlook, resourcefulness, professional presence, strategy, talent, and problem-solving. More recently, he became a Certified Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), which fosters human excellence at work and in other venues.

Joe received a Master’s Degree in Organization Development from the American University/National Training Lab, diplomas in hypnosis from the Hypnotherapy Training Institute of Northern California and the Hypnotherapy Academy of America in Santa Fe, N.M., Certification as a Practitioner of NLP by Patrick Singleton in Santa Fe, N.M., a Master’s Degree in Clinical Social Work from the University of Maryland, and a Ph.D. in Literature from Harvard University. As a graduate student at Harvard, he earned Special Recognition for Teaching by the Harvard Crimson's Guide to Courses.