Leadership and Team Skills Workshop

Get to know the workshop facilitators!

Christina Olex

The Point

Chris Olex is a Corporate and Academic Trainer specializing in personal and team development, relationship building and communication, and self-awareness work. Chris utilizes a variety of teaching methodologies, including assessment, experiential learning, and group discovery, as a means to help participants fully connect training content to direct application in the workplace and in their personal lives. Chris has extensive experience in the academic arenas speaking at the following conferences: DIACES, DIALOG, IPY, APECS, NGPR, and DISCCRS. Chris has also been a presenter of leadership development work at ESWN conferences for over a decade. Other client relationships include delivering content for The National Center for Faculty Development, speaking to IGERT cohorts at WSU, Rutgers Women of Color Scholars Initiative, the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, and the Bard MBA in Sustainability. Finally, along with authors C.S. Weiler and J. Keller, Chris published a paper in 2011 titled “Personality Type Differences between Ph.D. climate researchers and the general public: implications for effective communication”. Chris believes in the power of assessments for self-discovery, and is a certified trainer for the MyersBriggs Type Indicator™ through the Association for Psychological Type; DiSC™ through Inscape Publishing; Emotional Intelligence through the Institute for Health and Human Potential; and is a certified coach through IPEC and the International Coaching Federation.

Meredith Hastings

Brown University

Meredith Hastings, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Brown University and the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, an interdisciplinary research center focused on understanding interactions between natural, human and social systems. Prior to joining the faculty at Brown in 2008, Meredith was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington’s Joint Institute for Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO). She completed her Ph.D. at Princeton University, working with researchers in the Department of Geosciences and at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. She is an NSF CAREER awardee, a recipient of the American Geophysical Union’s Atmospheric Sciences Ascent Award and was named one of Insight into Diversity’s 100 Most Inspiring Women in STEM. She is currently a co-PI of ADVANCEGeo (serc.carleton.edu/advancegeo), a national program funded by NSF to transform workplace climate in the geosciences and other scientific fields through the development of bystander intervention and research ethics training in partnership with professional societies. She also serves as President of the non-profit Earth Science Women’s Network (ESWN, www.eswnonline.org), increasing diversity across the geosciences with an emphasis on creating a nurturing community working for cultural change to eliminate barriers to a diverse scientific workforce, and empowering scientists through professional development. And she is a proud mom of two beautiful daughters, Anne (12) and Lyla (11).