My Story
Nat’s coaching career was launched in the mid-1980s during his tenure as a faculty member in the theater department at Emerson College in Boston. His first client was the owner and CEO of a Boston-area software company. The company had been acquired by a much larger international holding firm and the CEO, whose role was rapidly changing, needed support to help manage a disabling nervous response when suddenly thrust in front of large unfamiliar audiences.
Using his acting and teaching expertise, Nat “shadowed” him and offered techniques to help him calm down and become a more effective speaker and leader during a year-long coaching engagement. (Click on publications to read the article, “Engineers with Presence”, which Nat wrote for the journal Engineers Australia in 2014 referencing this story).
In 1994 Nat joined the Boston-based consulting firm, The Ariel Group, (www.arielgroup.com) and began a 22 year career working as a facilitator, program designer, account manager, and executive coach, a job which has taken him around the world working with business and non-profit leaders on five continents.
In 2006, Nat left home in Maine aboard his 43’ South African-built cutter, BAHATI, and embarked on a 5-year circumnavigation during which he sailed over 30,000 miles and visited more than a dozen countries. En route, he continued using his coaching and consulting skills to help finance and expand the scope and reach of the voyage. His keynote addresses focus on leadership as seen through the lens of the captain of a small offshore sailing vessel.
Nat’s current and past coaching clients include C-suite leaders from global financial services, retail, telecom, travel, consulting, and banking firms. Click on Testimonials to read what several of them have to say about their experience with Nat and his coaching and keynote approach. Some of his past clients include: AMEX, Deloitte, BCG, Chrsyler, KPMG, Norsk Hydro, Société Générale, General Electric, Capital One, IBM, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Disney, P&G, The Federal Reserve, Capital One, Sonae, and Executive Education Programs at IMD, Duke, Columbia, Harvard and Northwestern Universities.
In the non-profit community, Nat has designed and delivered workshops and coached leaders in numerous organizations from elder care programs, to prisons, to childcare management teams, and various educational institutions. He is currently developing a program focused on supporting veterans working to overcome PTSD challenges and reintegrate into their communities after traumatic life and work experiences.
Nat has created drama therapy programs for the Suffolk County House of Correction, and at the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center for the Aged in Boston. He has also coached leaders in several New England public school systems. In 2004, Nat helped found And Still We Rise, a theater company comprised of ex-prisoners and their family members, now in its 10th year performing and leading workshops across NY and New England (www.andstillwerise.org).
As an executive coach, over the last 30 years, Nat has supported senior leaders globally in their career development, communication, and leadership challenges. His clients include C-Suite executives in the banking, consulting, travel, telecom, hi-tech, and financial services industries.
Nat has extensive experience as a teacher and has instructed students in acting, movement, improvisation, and drama therapy at Emerson College, College of the Atlantic, Lesley University, the Boston and New England Conservatories, Omega Theater Center, and the Babson and Harvard MBA programs.
Nat is an eight-year veteran of Boston’s long-running comedy hit Shear Madness and was a company member with the McCarter Theater and the Actors’ Theatre of Louisville. He served as the Artistic Director of the Poets’ Theater in Cambridge, MA and has appeared in hundreds of commercials, feature films, TV dramas, training films, live trade shows and new product promotions. He has a degree in Theater from Wesleyan University and an MA in Drama Therapy from Lesley University.
