Deborah is an instructor of Management Communication at the Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania, and partners with both Columbia Business School and Duke Corporate Education as a speaker and coach for their custom leadership development programs. She also serves as a Visiting Professor of Executive Communications at the Beijing International MBA Program at Peking University, China, where she prepares senior leaders from around the world to present more effectively (in both their native and non-native languages) in a growing global marketplace.
As a regular columnist on leadership and communication for Harvard Business Review, Inc. and Psychology Today, she focuses on sharing practical, research-based approaches to common presentation and communication challenges, ranging from how to handle a presentation to a difficult boss to how to think on your feet. She has also been a featured expert and a contributor The New York Times, Oprah Magazine, Forbes, Fast Company, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Fox Business
Network, and American Express OPEN Small Business Forum.
Her broad range of clients range include Amazon, Bloomberg, Comcast, and Google to Kraft, Pfizer, Universal
Music, and The United States Army. She is also the author of books, including “Go to Help: 31 Strategies to Offer, Ask for, and Accept Help”, “Overcoming Overthinking: 36 Ways to Tame Anxiety for Work, School, and Life”
and “Tips of the Tongue: The Nonnative English Speaker’s Guide to Mastering Public Speaking.” She is also a contributing author to the Harvard Business Review Emotional Intelligence book series.
Deborah holds a BA in Psychology from University of Michigan, and an MSW from Columbia University.
She combines her background in cognitive and social psychology, leadership coaching, presentation skills, appreciative inquiry, and, perhaps most importantly, improvisational and stand-up comedy, to help leaders and teams think on their feet and make thoughtful decisions about their impact.
