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William Underwood

Bill Underwood serves as a Mobius Senior Consultant and Executive Coach and is also the cofounder and president of Catalyst Consulting Team, a Silicon Valley-based consulting firm focused on organizational development since 1985.

Bill coaches executives to implement key strategic initiatives and develop leadership talent, with a focus on aligning teams toward shared business results. His clients learn to conduct the types of productive conversations that result in making informed decisions. Bill’s particular interest is in transferring people skills based in the neurosciences and organizational learning.

The core of Bill’s practice is coaching executives and their teams on productive means to confront the pressing organizational issues they face. His approach engages developing talent while also meeting business challenges. Bill focuses on knowing/doing gaps and applying organizational learning tools with action. Bill helps executives utilize their differences to advance intelligent progress. His coaching and personal facilitation help key executives create productive relationships and develop agile solutions.

He designs innovative training programs in leadership development, teamwork, visioning, change management and critical communication. These trademark programs are customized for clients’ specific situations. Recent programs Bill designed and deployed include Vision & Strategy, Strategic Leadership Program, Managing Employee Performance, and Productive Dialogue.

In 1994, Bill pioneered the use of web-based collaborative software, GroupMind Express, to augment the quality of human interaction and decision-making. Clients such as eBay, Oracle and Conoco Philips use GroupMind Express for interactive web surveys and conferences, elearning, and managing global teams.

Catalyst began building experiential simulations for management and team development in 1982. Today, Catalyst offers cutting-edge interactive training and simulations that range from climbing peaks in New Zealand to half-day organizational simulations such as the BigPicture™.

Bill has worked with Adobe Systems, Cisco Systems, NetApp, eBay, PayPal, Levi Strauss & Company and Oracle Corporation, as well as nonprofits such as the American Leadership Forum, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and Shout-it-Now in Cape Town, South Africa.

Bill draws from a background in anthropology, cognitive psychology, general semantics and organizational learning. He is approved to use a variety of instruments. including MBTI, the Human Synergistic Life Style Inventory, the Leadership Mirror, Firo-B and Emotional Intelligence.