Navigating Grief in Organizations PDW

The family dinner table is sacred ground in the Fernandez family - so when Carla Fernandez's dad José passed away from brain cancer in 2010, having a potluck with other people who'd lost a parent was a natural way for Carla to unpack the experience of life after loss. As the co-founder and original host of The Dinner Party community, Carla is humbled and delighted every day by the thousands of Dinner Partiers turning their heartbreak into connection and forward motion. She's inspired by people using their creativity to find their own way through grief in a culture that has been severely lacking ritual and connection around loss - until now. She leads the organization's communications efforts, and founded the Workplace Resilience program. She's an NYU Social Entrepreneurship Fellow, a member of the women's leadership group Belizean Grove, and a Senior Fellow at the USC Annenberg School of Communications Innovation Lab.

Dr. Jason Kanov earned his PhD in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan. His research broadly focuses on relationships and everyday interactions in organizations. In particular, he studies the dynamics of suffering and compassion in the workplace, and he is also interested in experiences of relational disconnection. He has published his research in various academic journals and handbooks including Academy of Management Review, Human Relations, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Business Ethics, and Harvard Business Review. Dr. Kanov teaches courses on organizational behavior and management topics including motivation, teamwork, negotiation and conflict management, diversity, and relationship management. As a certified mediator, he focuses his applied work on helping people build and maintain high-quality work relationships, and he is a happily married father of two amazing young children.

Joyal Mulheron is a policy and strategy expert with more than 20+ years of service to the nation’s governors, The White House and some of the most distinguished nonprofit ventures. Joyal has served both Republican and Democratic lawmakers and worked alongside some of America’s most notable corporate brands, while maintaining her ties and credibility with advocates. In 2014, Joyal founded Evermore, a nonprofit dedicated to making the world a more livable place for bereaved families. Evermore is an emerging movement of concerned citizens who believe that bereavement care in America is broken. Changing our nation’s awareness and response to bereavement has never been more important. Evermore is committed to an America where all families and professionals have access to care, programs, tools, policies and resources to respond and adjust to loss. Our nation’s public and private leaders should take urgent action to address and support our families during their most fragile and darkest hour.

Dr. Gianpiero Petriglieri is an Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD, and an expert on leadership and learning in the workplace. Gianpiero's award-winning research and teaching focus on what it means, and what it takes, to become a leader. He is particularly interested in the development and exercise of leadership in the age of "nomadic professionalism," in which people have deep bonds to work but loose affiliations to institutions, and authenticity and mobility have replaced loyalty and advancement as hallmarks of virtue and success. Gianpiero's research has appeared in leading academic journals. He also writes essays regularly for the Harvard Business Review and Sloan Management Review. His work has been featured in a range of media and he is listed among the 50 most influential management thinkers in the world by Thinkers50 . A Medical Doctor and Psychiatrist by training, Gianpiero has worked as an executive coach, practiced as a psychotherapist, and served on the staff of group relations conferences in Europe and the United States.

Dr. Sabrina D. Volpone is an assistant professor in the Organizational Leadership division at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business. She earned her Ph.D. in Human Resource Management from the Fox School of Business at Temple University. At the Leeds School of Business she is the doctoral program coordinator for the Organizational Leadership and Information Analytics division and also runs the Diversity and Identity (DI&ID) Management Research Lab. Dr. Volpone’s research focuses on diversity management and identity management in organizations. Specifically, she use both qualitative and quantitative methods to understand how organizations manage their diverse workforces and how diverse individuals flourish through the management of their identities at work. This work focuses on examining the workplace experiences of traditionally under-represented employees, as she has work on the topics of diversity and identity management published in the context of race, gender, disability, sexual orientation and immigrant status.

Dr. Kristina Workman is an assistant professor of management at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. She received her PhD in management and organizations from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and graduated summa cum laude with a BBA in management and psychology from the Commonwealth Honors College at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Dr. Workman's research focuses on affirmative interpersonal dynamics (AID), or in other words, how individuals at work do (or do not) relate in ways that foster acknowledgment, respect, and support. In this vein, she conducts research in the areas of prosocial behavior, behavioral ethics, compassion, leadership, and sharing and responding to news at work. Professor Workman is particularly interested in the power of seemingly small, everyday interactions, and how individuals' actions influence the quality of treatment they receive from interaction partners or third parties. Her research highlights individuals' agency in determining how particular interpersonal encounters unfold and how their relational context at work develops.