William Underwood
Since 1985, Bill has designed and facilitated programs for organizational effectiveness, leadership, team learning, and personal mastery for executives and leaders worldwide. Bill co-founded Catalyst Consulting Team to provide consulting services for vision, strategy and culture, training services for people managers and leaders, and executive coaching services. Catalyst’s research-based team intervention approach is focused on human dynamics relating to strategic choice, change, and work relationships.
Drawing on cognitive and developmental psychology as well as management best practices, Bill coaches executives to utilize their differences to advance intelligent progress. He focuses on knowing/doing gaps and helping to apply personal learning to action. His coaching and personal facilitation aids key executives in developing resilience in the face of complexity by applying an integral model for personal and organizational development. Bill works with executives, directors and managers in tech companies from start-ups to large corporations, as well as nonprofits and NGOs.
Bill’s background is in cognitive psychology, organizational learning, action science, general semantics and mindfulness. He has a double major in Anthropology/Sociology and Religious Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University and is an approved coach through the Executive Arts Coaching Program and Action Design Institute. He is accredited in LecticaTests, assessments in workplace decision-making and self-development, and certified in Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, The Leadership Circle, Executive Arts Leadership Mirror, Firo-B, MHS Emotional Intelligence 360, and multiple 360-competency feedback instruments.
Bill also creates and facilitates experiential simulations for management and team development such as BigPicture™ and other development games and simulations.
Based in Santa Cruz, Bill works with companies around the world: Adobe Systems, Airbnb, Autodesk, Cisco Systems, eBay, GREE, Intuit, Lookout, Maxim Integrated, NetApp, Pivotal Labs, Silicon Image, Splunk, and Taleo. Nonprofits and NGOs include the American Leadership Forum, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and Shout-It-Now in Cape Town, South Africa.