Board of Directors

Fredia Woolf founded Woolf Consulting to enhance the quality, capacity, diversity and effectiveness of leadership in both for profit and non-profit organizations. She works with senior executives and leadership teams, helping them to increase personal and organizational performance, productivity, engagement, and ability to achieve breakthrough results. Fredia brings to her coaching and consulting work a deep understanding of business realities, organizational savvy, and a strategic sensibility, combined with seasoned pragmatism. Her flexible and collaborative approach and multi-functional, cross-cultural perspective enable her to quickly grasp challenges and to craft solutions, enabling small shifts to create large impact.

Prior to founding her consulting firm in the Boston area in 1997, she spent sixteen years in the global capital markets, where she held senior line and leadership roles, and was responsible for developing cross-border business for a number of Wall Street firms. She built, turned around, and led successful international sales teams, created products and services to improve investor relations, and advised senior executives in some of the largest European companies on enhancing communication with their investors.

Fredia's education spans the disciplines of language, literature, education and business. After graduating in her native South Africa, she continued her studies in the UK and the US, where she was awarded an MBA with Highest Honors from Simmons School of Management. She is a founder member of the Leadership Council, a peer mentoring group for women business leaders, serves as a board member of the Boston Facilitators Roundtable, is a member of the Boston Club, an influential organization of senior executive and professional women, and is a weekly blogger about Leadership and Workplace issues.

Mike Festa is a distinguished attorney with an elder-law practice in Melrose, MA. He is the former President of the Carroll Center for the Blind, Newton, MA and holds the position of Adjunct Professor, Suffolk University, Graduate School of Public Management. Festa formerly served as the Secretary of Elder Affairs for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He was formerly the state representative for Melrose, Massachusetts and parts of Wakefield, Massachusetts. He attended Tufts University, B.A. 1976 and Suffolk University Law School, J.D. 1979. From 1979 to 1981 he held office as the assistant district attorney, Middlesex County. Festa has also been an attorney in private practice since 1981.

The elected offices Festa has held include: Massachusetts House of Representatives, 1999-2007 (32nd Middlesex District), Vice-Chair of Joint Committee on State Administration & Regulatory Oversight, Melrose School Committee 1974-78 and Melrose Board of Aldermen, At-Large, 1978–80, 1992-98.

Rikk Larsen is a founding partner of Elder Decisions where he is a mediator, trainer and conflict coach. At Agreement Resources, Rikk's mediation and conflict coaching practice includes divorce, post-divorce and marital mediation. He has created and presented conflict skills trainings to eldercare professionals from around New England. Rikk served on a Subcommittee for the Massachusetts Trial Court's Standing Committee on Dispute Resolution. He co-presented "Using Mediation in Elder Law" at the Massachusetts Chapter of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys and presented a workshop "When Families Struggle with Dementia: Facilitating Solutions through Mediation" at the Dartmouth Alzheimer's Conference. He is the co-author, with Crystal Thorpe, of "Elder Mediation: Optimizing Major Family Transitions" for Marquette Elder's Advisor Law Journal. He was featured on NPR's Morning Edition show, "Mediators Help Families with Tough Choices of Aging."

Rikk is a former case coordinator for Family and Probate Court and a case liaison for Small Claims Court for the Harvard Mediation Program. He attended Harvard Law School's Program on Negotiation. He is a member of the Association for Conflict Resolution and the Massachusetts Council on Family Mediation. He received his BA from Williams College and his MBA from Harvard Business School.

Laurie Pascal is the Vice President of Business Development and Planning at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a $1.3 billion, 600+ bed Harvard Medical School affiliated hospital. Ms. Pascal is responsible for strategic planning, for the development of new clinical programs and comprehensive multidisciplinary clinical centers, and for joint resource planning with BIDMC's 750+ physician faculty practice. She is also the Vice President of Radiology, overseeing the operations of the 400+employee, 100-physician Radiology Department.

Previously Ms. Pascal was Assistant Vice President of Corporate Projects & Planning at Tufts Health Plan. Earlier positions include Vice President-Strategic Planning & Marketing at Bank Boston and Chair of the Management Department/David and Barbara Gray Koch Professor of Management at Pine Manor College. Ms. Pascal began her career at the Ohio Department of Health and the U.S. Public Health Service and has consulted to healthcare and higher education organizations.

Ms. Pascal is an Instructor at the Harvard School of Public Health. In addition to ITNGreaterBoston, she serves on the Boards of Goddard House, a provider of assisted living and skilled nursing care; Germaine Lawrence Inc., a provider of residential treatment for adolescent girls; and Pine Manor College. Professional affiliations include The Boston Club, Boston Women in Health Care Management, and Women Business Leaders of the U.S. Healthcare Industry.

Ms. Pascal received an MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health, an MBA from Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, and a BA from the University of Michigan.