Cascadia Center for Leadership Faculty

Mary V. Gelinas, Ed.D.

Mary Gelinas is a Managing Director of Gelinas James, Inc. She has 30 years of experience as a consultant to or leader of organizations. Her experience includes acting as a principal of a national consulting firm, directing operations for a behavioral research and development company, and managing a team of consultants for a national training and consulting center. In addition to co-directing Cascadia Center for Leadership, Gelinas and Roger James developed and serve as primary faculty for the Leading Organizational and Community Change at Humboldt State University.

Mary has specialized in collaborative approaches to complex, comprehensive change and has developed and refined a number of approaches as the lead consultant for many large-scale change projects. She has served clients in the not-for-profit, for-profit, education and government sectors including Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District, Humboldt State University, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Genentech, Kokatat, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, and Redwood Coast Energy Authority.

Mary has authored or co-authored many books, articles, and papers in the areas of organization development, consulting skills, and change management. Publications include Talk Matters! Solving Complex Issues Through Brain Science, Mindful Awareness and Effective Process (Friesen Press, 2016) and Collaborative Change: Improving Organizational Performance (Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 1998).

Mary received her doctorate in Applied Behavioral Sciences from the University of Massachusetts in 1978.

For more information see gelinasjames.com and humboldt.edu/locc/

Roger G. James, Ed.D.

Roger James is a Managing Director of Gelinas James, Inc. He has 35 years of experience as an organizational consultant. With Mary Gelinas, he is co-director of the Cascadia Center for Leadership, and serves as primary faculty for the Leading Organizational and Community Change at Humboldt State University.

Prior to forming Gelinas James, Inc., Roger was the Director of Organization Development for Pacific Gas & Electric Company. In that capacity, he managed a consulting group that received the American Society for Training and Development’s national award for consulting excellence.

Roger has specialized in collaborative approaches to complex, comprehensive change and has developed and refined a number of approaches as the lead consultant for many large-scale change projects. He has served clients in the not-for-profit, for-profit, education and government sectors including Carrier Corporation, Humboldt State University, Duke University Medical Center, World Shelters, Liz Claiborne, City of Eureka, Schatz Energy Research Center, and Chevron Research and Technology.

Roger received his doctorate in Applied Behavioral Sciences from the University of Massachusetts and is a graduate of Columbia University’s Advanced Program in Organization Development.

For more information see gelinasjames.com and humboldt.edu/locc/

Robert Maurer, Ph.D

Bob Maurer has devoted most of his professional life to the study of excellence: how people create and sustain success in work, health, and relationship. He is a clinical psychologist, a clinical instructor at the Santa Monica-UCLA Hospital Family Medicine Residency. He is an Associate Clinical Professor with the UCLA School of Medicine and the founder of the Science of Excellence, dedicated to enhancing enthusiasm and performance in all areas of life. He is also on the faculty of the Department of Family Medicine and the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Washington.

Dr. Maurer has provided individual and executive coaching and consulting to organizations including the British Government, the US Navy and Air Force, the EPA, Mazda, Walt Disney, and Kaiser Hospitals. His work on conflict management has appeared on ABC’s 20/20 and his programs on creativity were highlighted in the Los Angeles Times. He has won the US Navy’s civilian award for his contributions to their negotiation skills training courses.

He is the author of One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way (Workman Publishing, 2004) and The Spirit of Kaizen: Creating Lasting Excellence One Small Step at a Time (McGraw-Hill, 2013) and Mastering Fear (Career Press, 2016)

Heather Equinoss

Heather brings 15 years of project management, meeting design and graphic facilitation, and community engagement experience in public, nonprofit, private and community settings. She finds purpose in supporting people and organizations to bring about the positive change they envision in their communities.

Her specialty is using visual notetaking tools to engage people’s innate creativity, capture a group’s wisdom, focus their work, and build agreement about next steps. As a faculty member of the Cascadia Center for Leadership, she has shared her enthusiasm for graphic recording with participants since 2009. She also serves as faculty for the Leading Organizational and Community Change program at Humboldt State University.


When working to meet the unique needs of clients, she draws from training in advanced graphic facilitation and meeting design; public engagement process design; relational community organizing; systems thinking; and universal design.

For more information, see equinossconsulting.com and humboldt.edu/locc