Rosemary Feal, executive director emerita of the Modern Language Association (MLA), brings fifteen years of executive leadership in the not-for-profit sector to her consulting and coaching practice. Specializing in higher education and organizations with scholarly and artistic missions, Rosemary builds on her decades of experience as a distinguished professor in the humanities and a scholar who writes for both a specialized audience and a general public.
As the executive director of the largest humanities association in the world, Rosemary tackled some of the biggest issues facing higher education in our times. Her leadership pushed the MLA into new ventures, such as preparing humanities scholars for careers beyond the academy, changing how languages other than English are taught in the United States, and creating digital humanities commons for collaboration across fields and institutions around the globe. Rosemary knows her way around the halls of Congress and the major government and private granting agencies and foundations. She’s talented in media relations and keynote speaking and in teaching these proficiencies to others.
Rosemary recently completed a consulting project with a scholarly association in which she provided the research and analysis necessary for the director and the board to initiate strategic planning and make major operational changes. Responding to the needs of a large private university, Rosemary undertook a comprehensive national study of the structures for how languages other than English are taught in higher education and devised site-specific recommendations. During the past year, she has reviewed and edited grant proposals, helped activists and scholars in Latin America to develop their capstone projects for a Harvard certificate, and assisted a not-for-profit association in reimaging member engagement in pandemic times.
In her coaching practice, Rosemary works with executive directors, boards, and university professors and administrators. She takes the time to explore the unique goals, hopes, and expectations that each individual or institution imagines as they enter into the coaching engagement, and she builds in assessment and accountability with each partnership. Rosemary’s coaching clients call her “intuitive,” “wicked smart,” “thoughtful,” and, much to her joy, one professor commented that her sense of humor made the coaching sessions “unexpectedly fun.”
As an Institute of Coaching Fellow, Rosemary Feal is privileged to participate in the research and practice work that IOC offers. Rosemary maintains an affiliation with the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at Harvard University as a resident scholar.
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