Edie Mitchell
Executive Education instructor back on college campus
You could say that Edie Mitchell’s career has come full circle. Once an administrator in residential life at Northeastern University and adjunct faculty at Emmanuel College, she spent most of her career in human resources for companies like State Farm, Time Warner, McGraw-Hill and Arrow Electronics. Now, she’s back on a college campus co-teaching human capital management to the Executive MBAs and teaching leadership development and management for Executive Education.
“I’ve loved being back in the classroom,” Mitchell said. “It’s really important to me to teach and facilitate conversation that brings together relevant theory and real-life examples of practical, every day application of that theory.”
Mitchell always thought she’d work on a college campus. After receiving a Master’s in Education in College Student Personnel Services from Ohio University, she worked at several universities in student affairs and/or in higher education roles. Early on, she realized her professional passion and expertise was designing leadership experiences and teaching others how to be effective leaders and managers.
So, instead of sticking to student affairs, she taught organizational change at Emmanuel College in Boston, completed her PhD in leadership and took a job implementing the onboarding process for more than 400 employees at Sapient Corporation, a global tech company.
“They were very passionate about culture and core values,” she said. “So, it didn’t matter what role you were in, every person participated their first week in their onboarding initiative.”
Mitchell explains that the company hired her to facilitate the five-day program because of her teaching experience, not because of her knowledge in tech.
“The priority the company put on their employees understanding company culture and demonstrating their core values was phenomenal,” she said. “I still refer back to the work I did there.”
Mitchell went on to work at a variety of major companies. At State Farm, she coached senior-level leaders on leadership effectiveness and talent identification. At Time Warner, she led the leadership program for the top 300 executives. Most recently at Canvas Credit Union in Denver, she and her team reduced turnover by building and executing a talent, learning and leadership function so employees and leaders at all levels had more robust formal and informal development opportunities.
She now has her own firm, where she provides leadership development and human capital consulting to companies, organizations and individuals in addition to her teaching opportunities at Daniels.
“I am humbled and excited to start a new chapter,” she said. “I love to help individuals learn self-leadership. No matter your role, you can demonstrate leadership. How does your behavior impact other people? How can you effectively get things done? It’s wonderful to be in a place to share from my years of experience and also have the students learn from their peers too.”
Mitchell will teach in the Emerging Leaders Program. The next ELP class is in April 2020. To learn more, visit the Executive Education website.