We’re passionate about transforming leaders.
Meet Melisa*
Melisa has an unwavering commitment to high performance, a bone-deep belief that people are the centerpiece of work, and a zealous devotion to creating the future.
More than 35 years of organizational development work have given her a depth and breadth of knowledge few can match — but it's her warm embrace of what's next that truly sets her apart. With an insatiable thirst for learning, Melisa consumes new ideas with a critical eye and a curious mind, delivering solutions rooted in best practices and informed by modern research.
That conviction — that people are the heart of every enterprise — is why she's especially drawn to employee-owned companies, where the people who do the work also share in what they build. But the belief travels everywhere she works: from boardrooms to shop floors, start-ups to century-old institutions. It's a conviction rooted in her own experiential education, long before it was a workplace strategy.
Above all, Melisa partners with her clients — drawing out the knowledge and wisdom already in the room to build solutions that last. And her collaborations with expert colleagues ensure exceptional quality on the most complex, large-scale, and system-wide work.
35+ years · 4 continents · thousands of leaders and teams
Over three decades, Melisa has partnered with leaders in organizations large and small — from the U.S. Army and MIT Sloan to today's clients: employee-owned companies like Stellar Industries and Pacific Steel and Recycling, manufacturer Harmonic Drive, and nonprofits like the Granite State Children's Alliance.
* and yes, her name really is spelled that way.
Always client-centric; never cookie-cutter.
We take on our clients’ interests as our own. No round holes for square pegs here! We don’t push an agenda, we work to understand the nuance and subtlety of your agenda and then help you move it forward.
Every human is unique, therefore every leadership team is unique, and consequently every organization is unique. Therefore, an off-the-shelf solution will NOT work. Sure, it may look sexy to have a packaged intervention with a cute name and its own logo, but we’d rather spend our time creating something that actually works. So we invest in you, understand your needs, explore your journey, identify the challenges, and generally get to know the team and the company. It is only through this process that our work together will matter.
Organizations grow when the leaders grow.
We have a fundamental belief that people have the power to grow and change, and we know that leadership teams harness the potential to transform organizations. The work at Gillis Consulting connects those two concepts, making sure that leaders, leadership teams, and organizations continuously evolve to meet the needs of the ecosystem of which they are part. That may include clients, customers, shareholders, employees, market conditions, investors, or any other part of the company’s journey.
When the leaders grow, the team grows, and when the team grows, the organization will follow. Heavy are the heads that wear the crowns! The first place to look when an organization needs to improve is the leadership team, and we take our systems-level thinking and our human-centered interventions to spur team cohesion, and organizational change.
Our Team of Associates
As a boutique consulting firm, we have the flexibility and fortitude to personalize our solutions to your specific challenges.
By partnering with a variety of colleagues from across our vast network of industry experts, we are able to expand and contract, broaden and deepen, grow and shrink. Whatever our clients need, our clients will get.
We reference our ‘encyclopedia’ of resources, our breadth of certifications, and our depth of knowledge for every engagement. See sampling below.
Change for good.
One-off events and off-sites feel nice in the moment but they don’t inspire or require sustainable behavior change. Melisa and the Gillis Consulting team partner with leadership teams who want to transform themselves, their team, and the organization. We work with leadership teams who are ready to roll up their sleeves and do the work required to change…for good.
“Melisa demonstrated a willingness to learn about the many unique aspects of our military organization. Her positive attitude and high energy gave those who interacted with her a renewed sense of optimism. Melisa worked with us to develop approaches that would work best for us. She did not come in with preconceived notions and try to ‘sell us’ her approach.”
- Senior Leader @ US Military