BIO

Mario Moussa, Ph.D., MBA

Mario Moussa is an award-winning author, management consultant, keynote speaker, and executive educator. He has taught at the world’s leading academic institutions, including UCLA, Duke, the University of Virginia, and the Wharton School. As a consultant, he advises senior leaders about top team effectiveness, communication, organizational culture, and large-scale change initiatives. He has delivered workshops on leadership, strategic persuasion, negotiation, collaboration, and culture to thousands of executives in New York, San Francisco, Beijing, Shanghai, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, London, Istanbul, and other major cities around the world. His work has been featured on National Public Radio as well as in leading publications, including Time Magazine, Business Week, U.S. News and World Report, Fortune.com, Forbes.com, Inc., Entrepreneur, The Economist, The Financial Times, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Mario is the co-creator of the popular Wharton Strategic Persuasion Workshop. He has also led the design of customized leadership development programs for organizations in a wide variety of sectors, including financial and professional services, pharmaceuticals, energy, healthcare, higher education, and government. By connecting the classroom and the boardroom, he closes the gap between cutting-edge research and business experience. His work is based on simple, repeatable techniques that deliver results in today’s turbulent economic climate.

For over ten years, Mario was a Principal at CFAR, a management-consulting firm that started as a research center at the Wharton School and spun off to become independent. He was co-leader of CFAR’s practice in Collaboration and Negotiation. His consulting clients have included such prominent organizations as State Farm, PNC Bank, GlaxoSmithKline, McKinsey and Company, Nielsen, UnitedHealth Group, Russell Investments, KieranTimberlake Architects, and MasterCard.

In his new book, The Culture Puzzle: Find the Solution, Energize Your Organization, Mario describes a step-by-step process for creating sustainable business cultures. His previous book, Committed Teams: Three Steps to Inspiring Passion and Performance, (written with Madeline Boyer and Derek Newberry) uses vivid stories and extensive first-hand observations to describe a process for building great teams. Mario’s award-winning first book, The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas (co-written with G. Richard Shell), has been critically acclaimed for its clear and effective methodology.

Mario holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in Center City, Philadelphia with his wife, where they raised their three children.

CONSULTING

Mario Moussa, Ph.D., MBA

Mario helps senior leaders build teams, plan for growth, and grow thriving organizations. He offers consulting support in three areas: top team development, strategic planning, and assessing and building organizational culture. His work relies on listening, expertise, and seasoned judgement. For each project, he assembles teams of leading experts to address particular client needs.

Every project begins with interviews that produce an evaluation of your current situation. From there, the consulting team designs a process that yields practical results. After making recommendations, Mario provides implementation support, as well. Cultures evolve and adapt to challenging environments. Plans emerge for a successful future. Teams become stronger.

Mario brings nearly three decades of high-level experience to his engagements, and he teams up with partners who are similarly accomplished. Current and former clients include many of the world’s leading organizations.

Testimonials

“Mario and his team have helped me become a stronger and more evolved leader through structured 1-on-1 coaching discussions and activities. I’ve found their executive coaching support to be so valuable, I’ve increased their original agreement to help expand our leadership and organizational support. I look forward to each and every session with Mario and his team. They are making us better in every aspect of our business culture.”

~ CEO, Industry-Leading Engineering Firm

“During our 70-year history, we have established ourselves as a resilient, competitive, community-based financial institution. We are located in one of the nation’s most competitive markets, and to be successful, we must commit ourselves to working on continuous improvement and improving the lives of our team and our members. We embarked on a journey of self-reflection and transformation with Moussa Consulting. Mario and his team expertly navigated our organization, provoking imperative dialogues among our leaders and engendering necessary connections among our employees.”

~ CEO, Financial Services Company

“Consulting firms are plentiful, highly strategic and effective consulting firms are rare. Moussa Consulting is an extraordinary and rare organization. Led by business savant Dr. Mario Moussa, he and his team are highly engaging, knowledgeable and progressive thinking. It is a challenge to lead a group of highly accomplished executives from varying business backgrounds. Dr. Moussa and his team have a unique ability to shepherd them through a process that ends in a strategy that they feel they had a role in developing and are excited to advance.”

~ Non-Profit Executive

WORKSHOPS

Mario Moussa, Ph.D., MBA

Mario offers lively, interactive workshops on communication, collaboration, and culture. A typical workshop begins with provocative questions that generate discussion related to the day’s topic. Why do people disagree with each other? What traits do world-class negotiators have in common? If you want something done right, should you do it yourself? Participants engage in simulations and problem-solving exercises based on actual business situations. Novices as well as the most experienced executives gain insights that enhance their ability to work with and through others.

Practical takeaways are immediately applicable. Examples include:

• Persuasion styles and how you can adapt them to achieve desired outcomes
• The five barriers to communication and collaboration, and methods for overcoming the barriers
• The systematic steps in the process of selling ideas, and negotiating when you need to
• The similarities and differences among influencing, persuading, and negotiating
• Ways to build organizational momentum for ideas
• Techniques for motivating others to take action
• Winning support for culture change

Using proprietary assessments, Mario also provides participants with individualized feedback about the strengths and weaknesses of their communication preferences and organizational culture.