Peter Thies is the President and Co-Founder of The River Group. He has 25 years experience helping global companies implement strategic organizational changes. Present and past clients include public company CEOs and executives in a range of industries including Financial Services, Consumer Products, Retail, Industrial, Professional Services, Telecommunications and the nonprofit sector.

His expertise includes:

• Building executive teams to improve performance and provide better leadership
• Developing the next generation of leaders
• Designing and executing seamless succession plans
• Integrating acquisitions on a global scale to build a unified, high performing company
• Redesigning organizations to stimulate high growth
• Increasing executive effectiveness with their direct reports, peers and Boards of Directors through feedback and coaching
• Prior to forming The River Group, Dr. Thies was a Senior Client Partner with Korn/Ferry’s Leadership and Talent Consulting division and co-leader of the firm’s CEO Succession practice.

Earlier in his career Peter founded Equinox Organizational Consulting, a global organization development firm. He was a partner at Mercer Delta Consulting (now Oliver Wyman) for 11 years, holding several leadership positions. He has published numerous articles in business journals and books on organizational change. Peter holds a PhD and MBA in organizational behavior from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an MS in educational psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in psychology from SUNY Albany.

Ollie Sommer is a Partner at The River Group. He has over twenty years experience as a consultant and executive. He specializes in helping executive teams create and implement transformational organic and M & A driven strategies. He has consulted to organizations across the US and Australia.

His expertise includes:

• Redesigning organizations in partnership with senior leadership teams to accelerate strategic growth objectives
• Developing comprehensive organizational design options to align strategic objectives with talent capabilities and needs
• Creating implementation frameworks including talent development programs to ensure the achievement of identified strategic objectives
• Enhancing the effectiveness of program and project management capabilities to accelerate change management objectives
• Identifying, executing and integrating acquisitions in order to realize targeted revenue and cost synergies as well as the requisite business model and talent integration objectives
• Developing initiatives for broad-based talent engagement across organizational levels to promote a common culture aligned with strategic objectives

Before joining The River Group, Ollie was the Executive Vice President of Corporate Development at First Niagara Financial Group, a $37 billion asset bank holding company operating in the Northeast. He created and led the Corporate Development function including responsibilities for strategic planning, enterprise program and project management, mergers and acquisitions, integration management, and organizational development. Prior to his role at First Niagara, he was the President of Aston Associates, a leading advisory firm for financial institutions and their investors. Aston focused on the strategic, organizational and operational design of its clients; it also assisted with target identification, due diligence and integration for mergers and acquisitions as well as capital raising and structuring.

Lisa Shall is an Associate Partner working with The River Group, a management consulting firm that helps CEOs and senior executives transform their organizations and their leaders in order to execute their strategy.

Lisa is a seasoned talent management professional with deep experience in leadership assessment, organizational design, change management, and talent management processes. Savvy relationship builder with the ability to adapt quickly, learn on the fly and work across geographic boundaries. She has experience transforming talent and implementing organizational effectiveness initiatives across a wide range of companies and industries. Past clients include Retail, Financial Services, Healthcare, Life Sciences, and Consumer Products.

Her expertise includes:

• Conducting organization diagnostic and leadership assessment processes
• Designing and delivering innovative leadership development solutions, with experience developing and delivering training for mid to senior level leaders.
• Designing and implementing change management programs
• Creating scalable talent management solutions, including Talent Assessment (9-box) processes
• Executive coaching and onboarding, including advising and coaching senior executives and their teams for maximum effectiveness

Strong program management capability; skilled in working with clients to develop communication strategies, identify milestones, determine change plans, and define success

Most recently Ms. Shall served as a Talent Management leader for Northwell Health. In this role, she had responsibility for redesigning the High Potential program, designing and implementing a Talent Assessment process system-wide, launching a new competency model, and developing and implementing a variety of talent management initiatives designed to improve employee engagement and leadership capability.

Previously, Ms. Shall was a consultant at Korn/ Ferry International, where she served clients and managed engagements across the areas of executive assessment, onboarding, high potential leadership development, organizational design, and culture redesign.

Ms. Shall previously served as a management consultant for Accenture in their Talent and Organizational Performance area. In this capacity, she primarily worked as the change management lead at several large retail clients, as well holding roles in other industries. Her role encompassed the areas of change management strategy, training strategy, training development, training deployment, organization impact assessment, business readiness, stakeholder analysis, and communications planning.

Earlier in her career, Ms. Shall was a marketing associate manager within the finance practice of Corporate Executive Board. Before that, she served as a marketing associate in the same company’s technology practice.

Ms. Shall earned a master’s degree in social organization psychology from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Michael Franklin is a Partner at The River Group with over 25 years of experience helping CEOs, boards of directors and senior managers to design and implement large-scale organizational change and build leadership capability to drive successful business performance. Clients have included Fortune 500 and mid-sized companies across multiple industries including financial services, health care, technology, telecommunications, energy, transportation and consumer products.

Areas of expertise include:

• Board assessment and development
• CEO and executive team effectiveness
• Executive assessment and development
• CEO and executive succession planning
• Organization design and transformation
• Merger and acquisition integration
• Change leadership

Prior to joining The River Group, Michael was a Managing Director with PwC’s Advisory practice. He spent most of his career with Delta Consulting Group, which was acquired by Marsh & McLennan Companies and operated as part of Oliver Wyman and Mercer consulting groups. Michael was a Partner at Delta for 15 years and led Delta’s San Francisco office for over 10 years. Before moving into external consulting, he led an organization-effectiveness and training function within Kaiser Permanente in Northern California. Michael holds a BA in Psychology from the University of California at Los Angeles and a PhD in Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology, Berkeley.

Peter Uher is a Partner at The River Group, a management consulting firm that helps CEOs and senior executives transform their organizations and their leaders in order to execute their strategy.

He has over 25 years of experience in implementing strategic initiatives in organizations in the US, EU and Australia. Peter is an expert in leadership and organizational development who works with clients to drive the effectiveness of senior leaders and their teams.

His expertise includes:

• Coaching senior leaders and working with senior teams on issues of strategy clarification, organization design, management processes and culture
• Implementing organizational change resulting from a new strategy or operating model, as well as from M&A or restructuring
• Working with boards of directors and management to improve succession planning and build a leadership pipeline
• Assessing executives for selection and development
• Designing and implementing key human capital processes, including those for selecting, placing, developing and retaining key employees

Peter has worked with a diverse group of client organizations including start-ups, privately held, non-profit, and Fortune 100 companies. He has considerable experience working within the Consumer Products, Financial Services, Technology and Utility & Energy industries.

Peter has held leadership roles and managed business units at the international consulting firms Korn Ferry International, Towers Perrin and Hay Group. He also worked as an internal consultant at BellSouth Corporation.

Peter earned doctorate and master’s degrees in industrial and organizational psychology from Bowling Green State University, Ohio. He received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Loyola University of Chicago.

Bani is a Principal at The River Group. She has over 16 years of experience in International Consulting and In-House Business Partner roles across the US, Asia and Middle East. Her area of expertise lies in assessing C-Suite Talent, Designing and Implementing Top Talent Development Programs, Succession Planning, Coaching and Developing High Potential Leaders and defining and driving a Value Based Culture to institutionalize a culture of high performance. A significant part of her career has been spent working with Founder Led Organizations, Large Multi Nationals, Financial Institutions, Healthcare, Non for Profits and Start Ups.

Her expertise includes:

• Assessing high potential C-Suite leaders using psychometric and qualitative tool methodologies
• Designing and Implementing Individual and Large Scale leadership development programs for top team development.
• Designing and implementing Succession Planning Initiatives to create future leaders.
• Designing and Implementing Culture Change initiatives to drive a culture of high performance
• HR Team Advisory by redefining people practices to drive higher value to the business.

In her previous consulting role, Bani was responsible for large scale Culture Change projects with Non-Profits with a focus on designing new leadership programs, redefining and guiding new performance management systems, redefining organizational values, and rebuilding internal communication systems.

Prior to Consulting, Bani worked with American Express and Genpact (formerly GE) where she was part of a significant organizational Merger and Acquisition.  While at American Express and Genpact, she played a key role in implementing a strong People Strategy with experience in Top Talent Development, Performance Management, People Engagement, Employee Relations, Diversity and Inclusion and Talent Acquisition.

Bani has a BA (Honors) in Psychology from Delhi University and a Specialization in HR from XLRI, Jamshedpur, India.

She is currently working towards becoming an Associate Certified Coach through the International Coach Federation (ICF). She is based in our New Delhi office.

Ellen Higgins is a Principal at The River Group. With over 15 years as an Organization Development and Change professional, Ellen has both consulting and in-house experience.  Her expertise lies in the aspects of Change and Transformation that deal with Organizational Redesign, Leadership Development, Culture and Talent Management.

She has experience across multiple industries, including Consumer Products, Packaging Solutions, Utilities, Insurance, Children’s Literacy / Publishing, and the Nonprofit sector.

Her expertise includes:

• Undertaking organization diagnostic processes to inform Talent Development and Organizational Redesign efforts
• Conducting Leadership Assessments and Coaching through well-established approaches and tools
• Designing and implementing impactful Culture and Change Management programs
• Establishing Organization Development and Change Management capabilities within organizations
• Performance Management process design
• Program design and implementation

Most recently, Ellen served as Director of Organization Development for Scholastic, where she managed the Organization Development & Learning team.  In this role she also advised and supported key business and HR leaders in diagnosing and implementing an Organizational Redesign effort, streamlined the program design and implementation methodology, served in Program Manager and Change Lead roles on technology implementation projects, coached high potential employees, and implemented an enterprise-wide Performance Management process.

Previously, Ellen served as a Change Lead, then a Talent Lead at New York Life Insurance Company, working on various transformation efforts across business units. This work involved Organizational Redesign and implementation, Culture, Change Management, and design of Talent Development programs.

Prior to this, Ellen served in Management Consulting roles at IBM and Capgemini, where she supported and then led Business Process Improvement and Change Management engagements with global clients across a multitude of industries.

Earlier in her career, she worked with The Conference Board in Events Planning. Then she worked for Urban Pathways as a Vocational Coordinator, enabling formerly homeless individuals to find work and develop skills.

Ellen earned her Master’s degree in Social Organization Psychology from Columbia University and Bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Arizona.

Morgan is a Consultant at The River Group. She assists with client project management and delivery, as well as firm intellectual property and data management and marketing operations.

She holds assessment analyst and program management expertise and is experienced in Executive Assessment, as well as Human Resources and Organizational Change.

Prior to joining River, Morgan worked in the health and wellness industry managing sales, client relationships, and merchandising for boutique fitness franchises.

Morgan earned a master’s degree in business administration specializing in human resource management and a bachelor’s degree in healthcare administration, both from The University of Toledo. During her time in the master’s program, she was invited to take part in the Advanced Leadership Academy, a cohort of the University’s top 130 graduate students, on the basis of campus and community engagement, leadership potential and academic merit.

Laura is responsible for all aspects of administration within The River Group.

Before joining River, Laura worked in the public sector. Laura has a bachelors degree in Psychology from University of Massachusetts Lowell and an associates degree in Business Administration.