Founder

For over forty years, Dr. Mark Rittenberg has helped organizations create communities of excellence among their people and empowered individuals to become true leaders with the ability to actualize a vision all through the power of communication. Dr. Rittenberg’s experience extends around the globe, across cultures and across industries.

Dr. Rittenberg is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, where he heads the Leadership Communications program for the Evening Weekend MBA and Executive MBA core programs. His Executive coaching practice included clients from major consulting firms, Fortune 100 companies, Sandia National Laboratory, Lockheed Martin Corporation, GAP Inc., Transnet Corporation (South Africa), Sasol Corporation (South Africa) and the AT&T Corporation.

In 1985, Professor Rittenberg was visiting Artist and Teaching Fellow at Harvard University where he conducted seminars in the Graduate School of Education and the Harvard Business School. In 1993, he was awarded the J. William Fulbright Senior Scholar awarded by the United States Information Agency and traveled to Soweto, South Africa, where he served as Diversity Specialist in building black/white relationships in South African corporations and education institutions. He returned to South Africa in 1994, 1995, and 1996 in order to implement Active Communicating Educational Programs as a communication intervention to assist corporate and political leadership in the transition to a multicultural, democratic, non-racial South Africa. His doctorate in International and Multicultural Education is based on his work in South Africa.

Dr. Rittenberg evolved the Active Communicating® methodology and the five Powers of Authentic Leadership® from his own background as an actor and director and through his cross-cultural education studies. The methodology draws upon acting skills and anthropological principles in skilling managers, aspiring leaders and the critical mass in becoming both powerful communicators and authentic leaders. He currently provides educational programs and executive coaching programs for international corporations including various Silicon Valley companies, AT&T, The Gap, Levi Strauss, Lockheed Martin and Sandia National Laboratories. In addition, he founded the Executive Coaching Institutes a UC Berkeley, training new executive coaches as well as executives who want to become more effective leaders by being trained in the arts and science of coaching. Berkeley Executive Education at the Haas School of Business certifies the coaches.

Dr. Mark Rittenberg also created the Brand Ambassador Program in the 1980’s when he led a culture change program for USA Department of Energy, Gap Inc., and AT&T. This highly effective program was used by AVIS Southern Africa in 2004 to take them from #3 to #1 in the marketplace where they have remained. Dr. Rittenberg’s methodology has successfully created culture change and value-based change programs globally from the UAE, Asia, Africa to the USA.

Additionally he currently teaches expressive communication and presentation in Executive Education Programs at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of San Francisco, the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, and the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis.

Dr. Rittenberg holds a Doctorate in International and Multicultural Education from the University of San Francisco. He also holds a Masters of Arts Degree in Interdisciplinary Studies in Education from San Francisco State and a Bachelor of Arts degree from University of California at Berkeley where he double majored in Education and Social Welfare.