Founder

For over thirty 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 addition, he trains executive coaches and directs the Executive Coaching Institute through the University of California, Berkeley Executive Education.

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 heads an annual Executive Coaching Institutes at UC Berkeley, Thailand and Italy where he trains new executive coaches as well as executives who want to become more effective leaders by being trained in the arts and science of coaching. The 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.

Program Manager
Faculty & Executive Coach

Ariela Morgenstern is an ICF and BECI-certified executive coach and communications lecturer who specializes in bringing intention and vitality to professionals' leadership presence. Pulling from her 20+ years of professional performance experience at the highest level across the country, she uses her expert knowledge of actor training, codified body movement analysis, and vocal pedagogy to help people communicate with authentic power. She is also a certified Design Your Life coach through Stanford’s Design Thinking team, and uses these tools to help her coaching client navigate through change.

As a member of the professional faculty at the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley, she teaches Leadership Communication for the MBA programs and for Haas’ Executive Education wing. To this work she brings extensive professional operations experience within tech, venture capital, hospitality, education, and manufacturing sectors. Her coaching and facilitation clients range from MBA students, educational leaders, tech entrepreneurs, doctors, seasoned sales teams, data scientists, and biologists at companies such as Salesforce, PayPal, eBay, UCSF, BAE Systems, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Eightfold.ai, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Blackhawk Genomics, and the U.S. Geological Survey.

She is a faculty director, coach and program manager for the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute (BECI), where she manages, leads, and facilitates custom programs to help lead change within organizations.

Ariela holds a Master’s in Communication Studies at San Francisco State University, where she researched the effects of dominant norms surrounding executive presence. In addition to her leadership communication work, she is a director and acting coach at Stanford University, Berkeley Repertory School of Theatre, and her own long-standing Singing Actor Studio in San Francisco.

“Ariela was instrumental in helping me communicate more effectively... Her ability to draw from and integrate various approaches to personalize my training was not only impressive but essential to my success. I cannot recommend her highly enough.”

Faculty & Executive Coach

Benjamin Mertz is a musician and educator based in Richmond, California. He has worked for over fifteen years with faith communities, civil rights groups, nonprofit organizations, and schools. He is currently on the board of directors of the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, a faith-based organization that fights for immigrants' rights and organizes against mass incarceration and deportation. He has also worked alongside organizations like the NAACP, EqualityForward, Black Lives Matter, Jewish Voice for Peace, The Asian Law Caucus, and more.

Benjamin is a certified Executive Coach from University of California Berkeley and the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute. He's worked 1:1 with leaders from Applied Materials, Google, Cisco, Proterra, and Fairmont Hotels, among others.

Benjamin's approach to Diversity & Inclusion is based in storytelling, curiosity, creativity, open-hearted dialogue, and a foundational belief in the goodness of human beings. Everyone is the expert in their own experience, and the path to a healthier society is built with courageous truth-telling and empathetic listening. Benjamin's perspective on social issues is firmly rooted in the prophetic, musical, and literary traditions of African American history: James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King, Langston Hughes, Nina Simone, and many others.

A third-generation professional musician, Benjamin’s mother is an opera and jazz vocalist and his “grandaddy” was a bebop pianist who worked with luminaries like Sarah Vaughan and Charles Mingus. Benjamin was further shaped in a culturally diverse, multi-ethnic church community in Paterson, New Jersey. His work with BECI is centered around building bridges, strengthening cross-cultural dialogue, breaking down silos, and creating nurturing environments where all people can thrive.