Dr. Kanu Kogod
President and Founder
Company: Bridges in Organizations, Inc.Role: Session Presenter
2022 Conference Session:
Navigating Messy Conversations
(S3-D)
Dr. Kanu Kogod is an anthropologist, an author, an award-winning instructional designer, a business owner, an expert in organizational culture change, and a mover and shaker on social justice issues. Kanu founded Bridges in Organizations, Inc., in 1987 and, from lessons learned, has helped support other women entrepreneurs get started on their own as well.
She applies her experience and insights about people and culture to business settings. Best known for her work on the award-wining Leadership Alchemy Program for NASA, Kanu now integrates her three main interests—team leadership, mindfulness, and inclusion—in order to aid her clients in reaching their particular goals. She is committed to supporting the learning of others, as well as her own learning. Her work with organizations such as NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Lockheed Martin, World Bank, MITRE Corporation, Crown Central Petroleum, Merck Pharmaceuticals, American Red Cross, the NCUA (National Credit Union Administration), and Hepburn Health Systems moved them closer to achieving their organizational visions.
Kanu is adept at guiding shifts in large systems from the bottom and middle up. Through focusing on alignment of shared visions, mutual values, common language and meaning, and joint use of tools, she helps people and teams build and sustain cultures based on trusting relationships. Her targeted team coaching approach is goals-oriented, while at the same time developmental. She has created a digital scorecard for teams to use to assess themselves on their own progress.
She facilitates high-quality dialogues among teams of all sizes. She has a way of both building on principles of leadership, mindfulness, and inclusion while also providing practices and tools her clients find useful, practical, and creative. She offers new ways of observing oneself and others, so people find it easy to apply their insights in all aspects of their life.
Kanu is a mother, grandmother to neurodiverse Andre who is on the autism spectrum, yoga and meditation practitioner, and avid volunteer for anti-racism work.