Profile - John R Childress

John Childress is a pioneer in the field of executive leadership and organization effectiveness, author of several books and numerous articles on leadership and he is an effective workshop facilitator for Boards and senior executive teams.

Career

Between 1974 and 1978 John was Vice President for Education and a senior workshop leader with PSI World, Inc. a public educational organization. In 1978 John co-founded The Senn-Delaney Leadership Consulting Group, the first international consulting firm to focus exclusively on leadership development, senior team alignment and culture change, and between 1978 and 2001 served as its President and CEO. His work with senior leadership teams has included companies in crisis (GPU Nuclear – owner of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plants following the accident), deregulated industries (telecommunications and the breakup of The Bell Telephone Companies), mergers and acquisitions and classic business turnaround scenarios with global organizations from the Fortune 500 and FTSE 250 ranks. He has designed and conducted leadership workshops in the US, UK, Europe, Middle East, Africa, China and Asia.

After retiring to France John turned his hand to writing novels. In 2004 he began to work on consulting and coaching assignments where he subsequently developed much of the material and leadership processes used by the principia project™ in its work with Boards and senior executive teams.

Education/Interests

John is a Phi Beta Kappa scholar with a BA degree (Magna cum Laude) from the University of California, a Masters Degree from Harvard University and was a PhD candidate at the University of Hawaii before deciding on a career as a business entrepreneur in the late 70’s. In 1968-69 he attended the American University of Beirut and it was there that his interest in cultures, leadership and group dynamics began to take shape. John resides in London and the south of France with his family and is an avid flyfisherman, with recent trips to the Amazon and Kamchatka in the far east of Russia. He is a trustee for Young Virtuosi, and foundation to support talented young musicians aged 10-16.

You can reach John R Childress directly at: jchildress@theprincipiaproject.com

Profile - Demetrie Comnas

Demetrie went to work for Chase Manhattan Bank in New York in 1974. Beginning his career in strategic planning, Demetrie spent twenty-five years with Chase in corporate finance.He financed commodity traders, broker/dealers, investment banks, municipalities, chemical companies, food manufacturers, paper & packing firms, media conglomerates and financial institutions. He headed critical corporate strategic inititives in Professional Development, formed and lead multiple industry groups in corporate finance across Europe, Africa and the MidEast, ran international product businesses, and headed Chase’s International Financial Institutions Group.

Demetrie left banking in 1999, and became involved in real etate development in Greece. Most recently he has joined a management consulting practice, the Principia Project. and has formed a consortium of bank training firms, called the UpSkill Group.

 

Career

In his first assignment at Chase in the mid-1970s Demetrie worked on a strategic study of the Middle East in the after-math of the first oil crisis. He was then assigned a position in Chase’s Commodity Finance Division, where he financed the world’s largest grain exporters. He was put in charge of precious metals and foreign exchange arbitrage finance during the late 70’s, during a period of historic volatility. He orchestrated Chase’s first involvement with the futures exchanges, and oversaw all Latin American commodity financing during the early 80’s debt crisis.

In 1983, Chase took dramatic losses in the securities lending business. Soon after, Demetrie was put in charge of the Wall Street Division, to re-build the bank’s risk management capabilities, relative to the securities industry. His work saw Chase safely through the market crash of 1987 with zero losses, and led to his being placed in charge, globally, of Chase’s professional development function.

Demetrie headed one of Chase’s key strategic initiatives in pursuit of investment banking capabilities. His challenge was to deliver enhanced skills in corporate finance, M&A and risk management, coupledwith wholesale behavioral change, as well as to develop Chase’s first ever curriculum for the trading floor. He lead a culture change process within his own department, producing such positive results that his approach was extended by Chase’s CEO to all 40,000 employees worldwide.

In 1990, Demetrie set up four new industry groups in Chase’s corporate finance practice in Europe, Africa & the MidEast, focused on the Media, Food, Paper & Packing and Chemicals industries. In 1992, he was put in charge of Chase’s Corporate and Institutional Treasury Services product business in the same region. In the years leading up to, and following, Chase’s merger with the Chemical Bank, Demetrie managed the bank’s Financial Institutions corporate finance practice across six continents, merging the two legacy banks’ global organizations, and personally leading its first landmark capital markets transactions within the former Soviet Union.

After twenty-five years with Chase, Demetrie took an early retirement in 1999 to start a private investment company, focused on real estate development in Greece. He recently joined the Principia Project, a London based management consulting practice focused on strategy implementation, and he separately has formed the UpSkill Group, a consortium of training firms to respond to the need to re-build the risk management culture within the financial sector.

Education/Interests

Raised in the US, UK, Brazil and Switzerland, Demetrie attended the Hotchkiss School, received his B.A. from Wesleyan University, and an MBA (Finance) from Boston University, Demetrie lives outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with his wife, Ann. He is on the Board of the Fulbright Foundation for Greece, and an active member of its selection committees.

You can reach Demetrie Comnas directly at: dcomnas@theprincipiaproject.com

Profile - Michael J. McNally

Michael J. McNally has over thirty-nine years of experience in the fields of personal, professional, and organizational development. Michael is known for his ability to blend facilitation and people skills with business experience to create consulting and training interventions that give life and enthusiasm to the results-oriented corporate world. He has worked with both private and public sector enterprises, specifically helping organizations in the insurance, real estate, banking, health care, education, manufacturing, entertainment, government, power and energy, aerospace, telecommunications, hi-tech industries and others. 

Career

Michael’s training and facilitation expertise covers the design and delivery of leadership and managerial skills development seminars: organizational vision, purpose, mission and values clarification; culture survey and change processes; facilitation of effective meetings; strategic planning and goal attainment methods; implementing total quality methodologies; executive coaching; interpersonal communications competency and mediation.

Michael’s contributions to business include the design, development, and facilitation of the culture change process at Metropolitan’s Casualty Company (MPL), to the design and delivery of Anheuser-Busch’s highly successful national seminars on Building Effective Teams and Motivating Yourself and Others, and Bayer Corporation’s acclaimed Personal Leadership Effectiveness.

Over the years Michael’s clients have included Anheuser-Busch, AT&T, Bayer Corporation, Bonneville Power Administration, Chevron, Delta Air Lines, Duke Power, Hewlett-Packard, J. P. Morgan Chase, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, Textron, TXU, and Weyerhaeuser Corporation and many others.

Education/Interests

Michael holds a B.S. in Business Administration/Marketing from the University of Wisconsin, and earned the position of Adjunct Professor at the University of Nevada Judge Advocacy School.

Michael and his wife, Kris, live in Eugene, Oregon with one of their four children.
They enjoy the Northwest’s out-of-doors. When he can find the time, Michael enjoys perfecting his fly-fishing technique.

You can reach Michael J. McNally directly at: mjmcnally@theprincipiaproject.com

Profile - Christiane Wuillamie

Christiane is a dynamic business woman, Veuve Clicquot Business Woman of the Year finalist and founder and CEO of CWB Systems Ltd, a premier IT consulting firm for financial institutions in the City and globally.

Career

Her corporate exposure began with Savory Milln, where she quickly worked her way up, becoming head of IT, then moved on to Swiss Bank and other senior IT jobs. In 1994 she started her own IT services company, CWB Systems Ltd with the goal of helping sort out IT organisations and systems in the financial services sector. Her unique ability to inspire trust and to solve big problems landed her assignments with all the major banks in the City. CWB experienced rapid growth of 100% year on year. Along the way she received numerous accolades and awards, including the Virgin/Sunday Times Fast Track 100 award in 1999 and the Virgin/Sunday Times Profit Track 100 award in 2000. Christiane was also named Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award Finalist in 1999 and “IT Personality of the Year” at the Computing Magazine Awards in 2000.

In 2001, Christiane sold CWB Systems to the French technology firm, Thales. For the next several years, she and her husband and young daughter lived in the South of France. Christiane now lives full time in London and has an interest in a boutique firm, Elegius doing high level executive placement, mainly in the financial services sector. She also advises and invests in small growing businesses.

Education/Interests

Born in Vietnam and educated in France during the Vietnam War, Christiane Wuillamie came to the UK at the age of 17 as she felt England offered more opportunities for young talent.  Her organisational skills were recognised by the UNHCR and she was asked to help set up and organise a camp for arriving Vietnamese refugees. Always a self-starter, in 1979, she took a computer course to learn programming. It was the beginning of a rapid and successful career in IT and business. Christiane lives between London and the South of France, is an avid sponsor of young musical talent and a Trustee and Founder of Young Virtuosi, a charity to support talented young musicians.

You can reach Christiane Wuillamie directly at: cwuillamie@theprincipiaproject.com