Facilitators:

Darl Kolb
BSc – Illinois State University
MA – University of Colorado
PhD – Cornell University
Professor, Graduate School of Management, The University of Auckland Business School.

Darl’s main research interest is inthe area of managing personaland organisational connectivityfor performance and well being. He has studied globally distributed project teams and the use (andover-use) of smartphones. Darl received his PhD from Cornell University. Prior to becoming an academic, Darl worked as an Outward Bound Instructor throughout Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Alaska. Where possible, his teaching is still based on intensive experiential learning approaches. He has consulted with a variety of New Zealand and international organisations.

Liz Wotherspoon
BA – Bucknell University
Liz holds a B.A. in Psychology and Business from Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, USA.

Liz provides a broad range of consulting services to clients including facilitation, organisation design and structure, training, role and competency profiling, performance management, capability needs analysis, management coaching, and change management. As the Director of Growth and Coaching at The Icehouse, Liz leads the programmes that are focused on adding capability to established owner-managed businesses. Prior to joining The Icehouse, Liz was General Manager of Grafton Consulting. Liz has spent most of her career contributing to the success of her client companies through working with them to develop their most important asset - people.

Chris Woods
MA – The University of Auckland
PhD – The University of Auckland
Associate Professor, Department of Management, and International Business, The University of Auckland Business School Director, Coal Spud Group,
Life Fellow, Clare Hall, Cambridge, UK.

Kiwi born and bred, Chris’s interest in entrepreneurship and the small to medium business sector was sparked after working in Malawi as a small business advisor. Instead of catching malaria she caught the entrepreneur bug, becoming ‘hooked’ on the passion and energy that entrepreneurs bring to what they do. She currently teaches Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Maori Entrepreneurship in the Faculty of Business and Economics
at The University of Auckland. In 2003, Chris was instrumental, with the PostGraduate Students Association, in establishing Spark entrepreneurship challenge. She has been involved with The Icehouse business growth programmes since their inception in 2001. Her consultancy work is with SMEs and Family Businesses in strategy development, learning and business growth.

Deb Shepherd
BA – The University of Otago
MA (Honours) – The University of Auckland
PhD – The University of Auckland Senior Lecturer, Department of Management, and International Business, The University of Auckland Business School.
Founding Director, Coal Spud Group.

Deb is a senior lecturer in Management and International Business at The University of Auckland Business School. She is also a founding faculty member of The Icehouse growth programmes and has facilitated business growth programmes for SMEs since 2001. Her research and teaching focus is on entrepreneurial family business, entrepreneurial SMEs, the internationalisation of SMEs, entrepreneurship education, and social entrepreneurship. Deb consults to a number of businesses and sits on a number of advisory boards.