OUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Alan Brenner - Board Chair

Alan Brenner is a retired Silicon Valley Software Executive, with extensive experience building innovative software products and leading high growth businesses. Alan has held senior executive positions at Sun Microsystems and BlackBerry, currently serves on the boards of early stage startup companies, and consults to large and small software focused businesses. In his work with software businesses Alan aims to support them in creating a safe, inclusive container that embraces then leverages diverse backgrounds and views to foster innovation. Alan’s appreciation for team culture and, especially, the fabric of relationships within and between teams has brought him to the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland where he has has completed The Gestalt Training Program and the Gestalt Professional Certified Coach (GPCC) program.

Alan holds a B. A. degree with Honors in Philosophy from York University and a Masters in Computer and Information Science from Cleveland State University. After living for 20 years in Silicon Valley, Alan recently relocated to the Cleveland area, where he lives with his wife in Cleveland Heights.

jessica colombi

Jessica Colombi has over 15 years’ experience influencing and executing systems change in complex institutions. She is inherently collaborative and enjoys partnering with people to make organizations “hum”.

Currently the Director of Policy & Research for Cleveland City Council, Jessica has previously served as the Executive Director of Career Services at Cleveland State University, where she led the re-design and implementation of a new organization and brand for the office, refreshing the department’s reputation and helping the university meet its mission. She executed significant changes in strategy, organizational culture, quality of service delivery, data collection and evaluation. Previous to her time on a college campus, she served as Chief of Staff to the Chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents (now the Ohio Department of Higher Education), where she worked as part of a leadership team that influenced and changed public policy and the perception of higher education across the state of Ohio.

Jessica has completed The Gestalt Institute of Cleveland’s Training Program, Working with Physical Process, and is a Gestalt Professionally Certified Coach (GPCC). Jessica is a trained and skilled facilitator, and has facilitated racial equity training for corporate executives, non-profit board members, healthcare professionals, and K-12 teachers and administrators. Jessica is also part of a small team that has developed an Ohio Attorney General certified cultural competence training for law enforcement, and has trained over 1000 officers across two states and four counties.

She has a bachelor’s degree in Art History from John Carroll University and a master’s degree in Psychology with a certification in Diversity Management from Cleveland State. Jessica and her husband live in the city of Cleveland and enjoy marathon viewings of The West Wing.

Tony Jack

Anthony “Tony” Jack has a BSc in Psychology and Philosophy from Oxford University, and a PhD in Experimental Psychology from University College London. He trained in Neuroscience through postdocs at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL, London and the Dept. of Neurology, Washington University in St. Louis Medical School. Since 2007, Tony has been leading neuroimaging research as the principal investigator of the Brain, Mind and Consciousness lab at Case Western Reserve University. Since 2015, he has been teaching a popular Science of Happiness course and has also been engaged in executive education and executive coaching (BCC). Tony has trained extensively in Gestalt Therapy, Coaching, Mindfulness, Breathwork, and other therapeutic modalities such as Dialectical Behavior Therapy. In collaboration with Richard Boyatzis, one of the founders of research on Emotional Intelligence, Tony has conducted the only brain imaging studies of coaching. Since 2016, he has been a researcher in CWRU’s Coaching Research Lab. In 2022 Tony was appointed to the Beamer-Schneider Chair in Ethics, with responsibility for the ethical education of undergraduates across the campus. He is an Associate Professor in the Dept of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, with secondary appointments in the Departments of Psychology, Neurology, Neurosciences and Organizational Behavior.

Tony is currently working on a book about his key findings from the last 15 years, provisionally titled "Revolution in the Mind." His work is strongly interdisciplinary, lying at the intersection of Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience. Tony has published in top journals in each of these disciplines. Tony’s principle academic contribution has been to develop Opposing Domains Theory, a new model of the mind informed by research in Cognitive Network Neuroscience. This theory recognizes the divide between analytic and empathic modes of understanding, and has profound implications for wellbeing, ethical leadership, spirituality, and consciousness.