Daena Giardella

Daena Giardella has been a leadership, team, and organizational consultant and executive coach as well as a media, presentation, and communication coach for over twenty-five years. She has enjoyed dual careers in business leadership/organizational development and in the performing arts. She combines these backgrounds to design innovative and highly experiential educational programs for numerous world-class leaders, companies, organizations, and academic institutions in the USA and abroad. Her highly experiential programs incorporate her Improvisation and Influence Model ©, which cultivates dynamic leadership, adaptability, emotional intelligence, resilience, and collaborative team communication. She also teaches numerous interactive skills-based workshops and programs that help leaders and team members effectively navigate difficult conversations, conflict, implicit bias, workplace sexual harassment, and bullying as they cultivate their ability to lead diverse teams that foster innovation.Daena is a Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management where she teaches Improvisational Leadership as well as special workshops for the Sloan Fellows, Executive MBA and Executive Education programs, and the Sloan Innovation Program. Her workshops include Effectively Navigating Challenging Conversations, Leading in Times of Uncertainty, Bystander Intervention and Speak Up Skills, Responding Effectively as Leaders to Bias and Harassment. She also works as an executive coach with mid-career leaders in the MIT Sloan Fellows and Executive MBA programs. She has taught seminars for the MIT Sloan International Programs Latin America Office in Chile and Argentina at numerous business and academic settings, including Catolica University in Santiago and Di Tella University in Buenos Aires as well as at the American Chamber of Commerce in Chile.