Meet Our First Renaissance Leader

Dr. Madelyn Blair, PhD is a business owner, author, speaker, and resilient leader coach. She specializes in unlocking resilience for individuals and work teams. She is faculty at Columbia University and has taught at several other universities including Kent State and Walden. Dr. Blair is the creator of the Phenomenal Four Plus One, which she refers to today as simply the five practices for building resilience.

Madelyn focuses her work in the emerging field of Resilient Leadership, exploring how individuals, managers and senior leaders can increase their agility in today’s global environment. She speaks regularly around the world on resilient leadership and related topics. Madelyn also writes on resilient leadership at Psychology Today and related topics on her blog.

Dr. Blair holds a PhD in organizational psychology from the University of Tilburg, The Netherlands. She is known for being a leader who has always brought her teams to a higher level of productivity. She is the author of five books including Riding the Current, Essays in Two Voices, Unlocked: Discover how to embrace the unexpected--#1 Bestseller internationally--and a contributor to many others such as Smarter Innovation, Lessons from the Field, and The University of the Future. Dr. Blair has written more than 100 publications and designed management processes that have been published in numerous books. She is also a founding member of an international group that introduced storytelling in business to the world.  Her work is universally praised and her influence is ingrained in the very bedrock of the global business community itself, as well as the principles and practices that continue to guide and define it. 

Madelyn has worked with large and small organizations alike, and in 1988 she founded Pelerei, a boutique consulting firm which specializes in resilient leadership, storytelling, organizational learning, knowledge management, and narrative intelligence. Her clients include such luminaries as NASA, World Bank, PwC, Merck, The State Department, Brookings Institution, International Monetary Fund, the Cincinnati Regional Chamber, NIH, and Huawei. She has run Pelerei for 30 years and counting. 

Notably, Dr. Blair was also a division chief at the World Bank. In addition to expertly managing countless demands and responsibilities in her role, it was there that she honed many of the qualities that led her to become so successful today.  

Her success, however, is not limited to boardrooms, media appearances and career accolades. It is at home where she does arguably her most influential work of all. In addition to various creative projects around the house (like gourmet cooking and clothing design) Madelyn Blair has been happily married for 45 years, raised a daughter and now enjoys a beautiful grandson. 

Learn more about bringing Madelyn to speak at your organization, conference, or symposium by clicking here.