Betsy Sanders
Betsy Sanders has lived her life committed to supporting leadership evolution on every level: personal, organizational, and global. In service to the specific needs and vision of her clients, she is qualified as both an executive and a life coach, director, consultant, mentor, speaker, and writer. She partners with clients around the world who are committed to leading meaningful organizations based on leading meaningful lives.
Her message is encouraging – and challenging. On a personal level, she works with those committed to their own transformation in owning and developing their essential abilities and gifts, assisting them in turning their vision into realities. Her expertise with organizations is in supporting them in making their values operational and their operations driven by their values. She leads her seminars and workshops by example, speaking from her own remarkable experience with warmth, humor, intelligence, candor and integrity.
Ms. Sanders began her experience leading winning-edge organizations when she joined Nordstrom as a sales apprentice. She moved quickly through the ranks, becoming Nordstrom’s first female store manager. Based on the surprising growth in a store that had seemingly maxed out its potential, Betsy was called to lead Nordstrom’s first foray outside the Pacific Northwest. She and her team made retail history building the new Southern California business to $1 billion in annual sales over a twelve-year period, quickly becoming Nordstrom’s largest and most profitable region. While developing Nordstrom into a business partnership with their customers, this team under Betsy’s leadership is credited with having set new industry and international standards for service, while maintaining the highest levels of operational excellence and efficiency.
Her book, Fabled Service, has been a sustained top-seller since its first printing in 1995. Now available around the world in several languages, it has become the service leadership handbook of choice for countless established businesses and budding entrepreneurs alike.
Over the past thirty years, Ms. Sanders has held director positions with some dozen prominent public corporations, including Wal-Mart, Wolverine World Wide (Merrill, Hush Puppies, etc.), Washington Mutual, Denny’s, and WellPoint (Blue Cross). In addition, she serves on advisory boards for several privately held companies and as a personal mentor to executives in various customer-focused businesses, while serving as an advisor/director of numerous non-profits.
Ms. Sanders earned an undergraduate degree in German Language and Literature, studying at the University of Munich under the sponsorship of Wayne State University. She has a Masters in Secondary Education from Boston University and a Certificate in Management from the University of Washington Graduate School of Business. She is a dedicated lifelong learner, holding certificates from numerous seminars and programs, all of which have added greatly to her understanding of the dynamics of highly functioning, customer-focused organizations. In addition, she has devoted herself to the inner development of herself and her clients, with study in the areas of Transpersonal Psychology, Positive Psychology, Values, Theory U, and Heart Math, among other related fields. She is also a certified Celebrant, and brings those skills into much of her work.
Everything Ms. Sanders is involved in is generated from her core belief in the unique giftedness of each person. The underlying call to leadership at every level is to create and sustain cultures that invite whole people in to find and share their gifts – and send whole people back out to their families and communities, while meeting real needs. She is a pragmatist, valuing the healthy aspects of capitalism currently being emphasized as Conscious Capitalism, in short, she is committed to the imperative in our times of the practice of business being a force for good.
Betsy Sanders has lived her life committed to supporting leadership evolution on every level: personal, organizational, and global. In service to the specific needs and vision of her clients, she is qualified as both an executive and a life coach, director, consultant, mentor, speaker, and writer. She partners with clients around the world who are committed to leading meaningful organizations based on leading meaningful lives.
Her message is encouraging – and challenging. On a personal level, she works with those committed to their own transformation in owning and developing their essential abilities and gifts, assisting them in turning their vision into realities. Her expertise with organizations is in supporting them in making their values operational and their operations driven by their values. She leads her seminars and workshops by example, speaking from her own remarkable experience with warmth, humor, intelligence, candor and integrity.
Ms. Sanders began her experience leading winning-edge organizations when she joined Nordstrom as a sales apprentice. She moved quickly through the ranks, becoming Nordstrom’s first female store manager. Based on the surprising growth in a store that had seemingly maxed out its potential, Betsy was called to lead Nordstrom’s first foray outside the Pacific Northwest. She and her team made retail history building the new Southern California business to $1 billion in annual sales over a twelve-year period, quickly becoming Nordstrom’s largest and most profitable region. While developing Nordstrom into a business partnership with their customers, this team under Betsy’s leadership is credited with having set new industry and international standards for service, while maintaining the highest levels of operational excellence and efficiency.
Her book, Fabled Service, has been a sustained top-seller since its first printing in 1995. Now available around the world in several languages, it has become the service leadership handbook of choice for countless established businesses and budding entrepreneurs alike.
Over the past thirty years, Ms. Sanders has held director positions with some dozen prominent public corporations, including Wal-Mart, Wolverine World Wide (Merrill, Hush Puppies, etc.), Washington Mutual, Denny’s, and WellPoint (Blue Cross). In addition, she serves on advisory boards for several privately held companies and as a personal mentor to executives in various customer-focused businesses, while serving as an advisor/director of numerous non-profits.
Ms. Sanders earned an undergraduate degree in German Language and Literature, studying at the University of Munich under the sponsorship of Wayne State University. She has a Masters in Secondary Education from Boston University and a Certificate in Management from the University of Washington Graduate School of Business. She is a dedicated lifelong learner, holding certificates from numerous seminars and programs, all of which have added greatly to her understanding of the dynamics of highly functioning, customer-focused organizations. In addition, she has devoted herself to the inner development of herself and her clients, with study in the areas of Transpersonal Psychology, Positive Psychology, Values, Theory U, and Heart Math, among other related fields. She is also a certified Celebrant, and brings those skills into much of her work.
Everything Ms. Sanders is involved in is generated from her core belief in the unique giftedness of each person. The underlying call to leadership at every level is to create and sustain cultures that invite whole people in to find and share their gifts – and send whole people back out to their families and communities, while meeting real needs. She is a pragmatist, valuing the healthy aspects of capitalism currently being emphasized as Conscious Capitalism, in short, she is committed to the imperative in our times of the practice of business being a force for good.
Michelle Schmitt
Currently a Partner in The Sanders Partnership, a leadership consulting and coaching firm, Michelle Schmitt brings nearly 30 years of dedicated public service experience. Over this time, she grew in her passion for bringing the best practices of servant leadership, healthy workplace cultures, and personal development to state service. The ultimate goal was always improving the lives of the citizens of California as well as the lives of those serving them. As the Chief of Organizational Capacity and Workforce Management, she was pivotal in getting state government to recognize the imperative to create healthy, sustainable organizations: places people come, stay, serve with excellence and thrive both personally and professionally.
She is a consultant, coach, collaborator, facilitator of dynamic dialogues, builder of communities of excellence partnering with leadership and all members of the organization to create workplaces that invite people to bring their gifts to serve a greater purpose as well as the bottom line.
Michelle is also certified as both an integral and somatic coach working with individuals to unleash their gifts and potential: serving you in seeing and growing yourself as well as your organization thereby creating wholeness and sustainable leadership excellence.
Currently a Partner in The Sanders Partnership, a leadership consulting and coaching firm, Michelle Schmitt brings nearly 30 years of dedicated public service experience. Over this time, she grew in her passion for bringing the best practices of servant leadership, healthy workplace cultures, and personal development to state service. The ultimate goal was always improving the lives of the citizens of California as well as the lives of those serving them. As the Chief of Organizational Capacity and Workforce Management, she was pivotal in getting state government to recognize the imperative to create healthy, sustainable organizations: places people come, stay, serve with excellence and thrive both personally and professionally.
She is a consultant, coach, collaborator, facilitator of dynamic dialogues, builder of communities of excellence partnering with leadership and all members of the organization to create workplaces that invite people to bring their gifts to serve a greater purpose as well as the bottom line.
Michelle is also certified as both an integral and somatic coach working with individuals to unleash their gifts and potential: serving you in seeing and growing yourself as well as your organization thereby creating wholeness and sustainable leadership excellence.
Charlotte Griswold