Barry Dornfeld, Ph.D., Principal, co-leads CFAR’s Life Sciences and Higher Education Groups. He has been a strategic advisor to organizations in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, and is an expert on organizational change, governance, and collaboration. He draws on his many years of consulting, teaching, and industry experience to help guide clients through complex business issues, develop a strategy for change, and to learn from their experience. Barry also teaches extensively, leading workshops on negotiation, board governance, strategy, influence and persuasion, and organizational change, and leading action-learning programs. He speaks to a wide range of groups in many industries with a focus on healthcare, life sciences, not-for-profits, and higher education, and has taught and spoken in many settings in the US and internationally, including extensive experience with Wharton’s Executive Education division. In addition to his academic positions, Barry has presented to a range of client audiences including the Association for Women in Science, the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals, and the Temple University School of Law. Barry’s experience as an anthropologist and filmmaker trained him to listen and ask questions, so that he can work with executives in ways that are attuned to their needs, culture, and learning styles, and that help them reach their business goals. These skills help him connect to clients easily, work productively in a variety of settings, and effectively advise and teach executives. His recent work in the life sciences and higher education has focused on ways to help organizational leaders maximize value across strategic partnerships such as those with academic medical centers and medical professional societies. The objective of this work is to optimize the investments in these organizational relationships relative to basic research, clinical research and trials, scientific information exchange, marketing, and educational curricula and programming.
Barry is co-author of The Moment You Can’t Ignore: When Big Trouble Leads to a Great Future, published by Public Affairs Books in October 2014. Barry holds a Bachelor’s of Arts in Anthropology and Economics from Tufts University and a Ph.D. in Communication from the Annenberg School of the University of Pennsylvania, and has been a faculty member at New York University and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.