Eric Olson
Strategic leadership consultant Eric Olson works with multinational clients such as Coca-Cola, UNS, Santander, and Microsoft to design and implement sustainable leadership initiatives that deliver business impact.
Eric is the practice leader for three areas of leadership: Leading in a Global World (Heart, Heart & Guts), Leadership and Sustainability, and Measuring Leadership Impact.
Harvard Business School Publishing and Oliver Wyman recently co-published his article "Creating Global Leaders" as part of a larger collaboration titled What the Future Demands: The Growing Challenge of Global Leadership. He wrote a chapter on "Achieving Success in the Globalization of Leadership Development for The 2008 Pfeiffer Annual: Leadership Development.
The foundation of his global work began with a life experience that included living in and travelling through more than 40 countries by the age of 20. Eric was the first outsider to explore parts of Borneo inhabited by tribes of headhunters, and he organized the building of the first school for Dyak children as part of a peace treaty that ended decades of tribal warfare. His current work in leadership expeditions includes Antartica (2008) and Africa (2009).
Eric's global leadership experiences led him to research how individuals succeed in spite of disruptions in their personal and professional lives. He has taught change and complexity courses at UCLA and UC Irvine Business School Extension, and applied his research findings through consulting work with Viacom, BP (ARCO), Sun Microsystems, Bayer, Toyota, MTV Networks, Pfizer, and Sony.
He was the CEO of HealthAddress, a UCLA-based eHealth company that provided online speciality services between the US and international medical centers in the Middle East. Prior to joining Oliver Wyman, Eric was Senior Vice President at a global consulting firm. His team generated the highest CAGR of any North American market team for three consecutive years. He simultaneously led multiple multinational leadership projects for European and US clients, bringing them substantial revenue growth and cost savings through various action leadership efforts. Previously, Eric launched an international organizational consulting firm that provided executive coaching and consulting services to Fortune 500 and healthcare organizations.
Eric holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the Fuller Graduate School of Psychology, an MA in Complexity and Organizational Change from the University of Hertfordshire, and an MS in Counselling Psychology from Central Washington University.