The Center For Resilience
Enabling People & Organizations To Thrive In The Midst Of Adversity
People and organizations that focus on survival – don’t. People and organizations that build the resilience to thrive – do! The Center For Resilience enables people, organizations and communities to become more resilient – to thrive in the midst of the adversity that surrounds us today. All of our work is grounded in the latest neuroscience. People who build their resilience using our techniques increase their perceived
physical and emotional wellness by 30%.
Leaders of corporations, medical centers and nonprofit organizations
working with us improve their productivity by 17% and are 25% more proactive.
Leadership teams working with us improve the speed of decision-making by over 50% to increase financial performance by 20%.
One client just calculated the ROI from our work with them at 67:1.
The Center For Resilience Services
Discover Our Expertise
Corporate Partnerships
Driving Sustained Profitable Growth
Our corporate partnerships span business intelligence, consulting, consumer product goods, education, financial services, hospitality, manufacturing, professional services, retail, and technology. Whatever the industry, our goal is to create a balance between getting short-term results and creating a resilient organization that continually gains new competitive advantages.
We integrate Customer-Centricity, Workforce Engagement, Platform & Product Innovation, Business Strategy Creation & Activation, and Human Capital Strategy. We work from the C-Suite to the frontline to align and activate the entire enterprise.
We provide assessment and executive coaching to Chairman, CEO’s and the other members of the C-Suite as well as tomorrow’s senior leaders. Leadership teams that partner with us increase the velocity of decision-making by 50% and financial performance by 20%.
Based on the latest neuroscience and predictive analytics we embed learning in the real work your people do. Giving them the knowledge and skills, they need to deliver your strategy and financial growth.
Valued Partners
For over 25 years, JSI has created food-forward displays that have transformed supermarkets across the country. JSI partners with future-minded retailers to re-envision the shopper experience across channels, formats, and product categories.
Corporate Partners
Select Healthcare Partners
Select Partners In Education
Select Private Equity Relationships
EnsembleIQ is a premier business intelligence resource that believes in
Solving Big Problems and Inspiring Bold Ideas.
For over 35 years RFE has been unlocking potential in lower middle market companies.
Building Individual Resilience
Maximizing Your Performance & Fulfillment
When individuals build their personal resilience, they experience a powerful array of benefits including increases in: personal productivity (17%); quality (60%); self-awareness (27%); proactivity (25%); confidence (13%); and positive emotions (29%).
Our methods for improving personal resilience are based on the latest neuroscience to provide pragmatic changes in behavior.
For groups of individuals we build resilience through working sessions and/or small group coaching. For single individuals we use executive coaching. In either case development of resilience is supported by a set of high impact activation tools.
Healthcare
Bringing The Joy Back To Medicine
No other industry is experiencing more turbulence, uncertainty, and challenge then healthcare. The people within this industry from the physician to the medical technician experiencing burn rates greater than 60%.
We’ve been privileged to partner with healthcare leaders and institutions who are responding to the challenges by reinventing all aspects of healthcare. Among these are Northwell Health, Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, and for-profit roll-ups of specialty practices backed by Private Equity.
We bring an integrated approach that includes strategy creation and activation; patient-experience driven by predictive analytics; merger and acquisition integration; operational redesign; creating a wellness culture; and developing the individual resilience of leaders, providers and staff.
Our results produce a higher quality of care, a workforce that is professionally fulfilled, and institutions with greater financial performance.
Private Equity
Increasing The Multiple On Exit
We work with portfolio companies from $50M to $1bn+ in revenues. We partner with PE firms during due diligence, moving beyond the 100-day plan to continue rapid, value creating growth, integrating new acquisitions into the platform company, to rapidly turning around operating companies that have derailed.
We work in a wide array of sectors including retail, consumer goods, B2B digital services, healthcare and manufacturing.
To maximize exit value and timeliness, we focus on driving improvements in four areas: Leadership & Talent; Strategy Activation; Culture; and Innovation.
About Us
Leo F. Flanagan, Jr., PhD
Leo F. Flanagan, Jr., PhD has more than 30 years of experience in studying and developing resilience. He has deep expertise in developing resilience at the individual, team, organizational and community level. He has responded to numerous disasters including 9/11, the Sandy Hook Newtown Shooting, Hurricane Sandy, and the Moore, OK EF-5 tornado. In the aftermath of 9/11 he developed and facilitated programs for First Responders serving over 300 of those who served at Ground Zero.
He led the development of a county's first psychiatric emergency service working with numerous hospitals, the judicial system and 44 police departments to ensure those experiencing emotional, mental and family crises received the appropriate services.
In addition to his work in trauma and disaster response Leo has deep expertise in the corporate sector. He crafts and activates business transformations by integrating human capital, innovation, and customer loyalty strategies. He has held senior level corporate positions at Merrill Lynch, Willis Holdings and The Forum Corporation. He consults across a wide range of industries including digital media, consumer goods, financial services, hospitality, healthcare, manufacturing, and technology.
His brand of business transformation is fast, lean, practical and integrated with - not burdened on - the business. His work produces a true ROI. Double digit increases in revenue, customer loyalty and employee engagement and reductions in cost are trademarks of his leadership. One leading financial services company recently calculated the ROI from his work at 67:1. The CFO of a major bank cited his work as more valuable than a $1bn acquisition with an 18% ROE.
Leo is a guest lecturer at Penn State, University of Notre Dame, Cal Tech and Carnegie Mellon. At Carnegie Mellon he is a faculty member and coach in The Advanced Leadership Institute. The Academy prepares high-potential African Americans for advancement.
Early in his career, Leo was a faculty member at Cornell University’s, School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
Always active in philanthropy and volunteer work, Leo currently is on the Board of Tuesday’s Children, an advisor to Children’s Learning Centers of Fairfield County and a member of Ministry to the Homeless.
Leo earned his PhD at City University of New York, his M.A. at Hunter College and his B.A. at Fordham University. Leo and his wife Maureen have four daughters. They also share a passion for travel as well as skiing, tennis, and sailing. Leo is also an avid fisherman.
Kenneth Lay
Ken has more than thirty years of executive experience most recently as Executive Vice President at Citizens Bank, first as the Commercial Bank’s Chief Technology Officer, and later as Chief of Staff for Citizens Business Services, which included Technology, Operations, Supply Chain, Property, Security, and Risk. Previously, he held executive positions at IBM, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America where he led Sales, Technology, Operations, Market Research, and Education & Training functions. He also served as Secretary of Revenue for North Carolina during the fiscal crisis in 2009/2010 where he initiated the first NC state government public-private partnership for a new benefits-funded IT tax collection system that achieved four times the projected revenue and paid for itself in two years, two years ahead of plan. As a result, the Department was recognized as one of the top 3 state revenue agencies in the U.S. for innovation and results.
Currently, Ken is Managing Partner of The Center for Resilience whose focus is on helping organizations address employee well-being by developing the Resilience of their employees. Ken is also the President & Founder of Change Leadership LLC that specializes in executive coaching and strategic business consulting for individuals, corporations, and nonprofit organizations. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor teaching Business Strategy at the undergraduate and graduate levels at the University of Central Florida.
Ken earned an MA in Social & Organizational Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a BBA from the University of Notre Dame. Ken is an ICF Certified Executive Coach. and a Senior Fellow, Human Capital, with The Conference Board. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Embrace Families.
Contact Us
Kenneth Lay
linkedin.com/in/kenneth-lay-3573223