SciEnTech Partners was created out of an appreciation for leaders in highly technical fields.We have extensive experience as coaches and consultants for biotech, chemical, engineering, health care, pharmaceutical, research, and software organizations. While there are commonalities across these fields and organizations, we enjoy the uniqueness of each client and insist that our work supports their ambitions and goals.
All of our significant client projects are designed and delivered by our two partners, Diane Russ and Matt Kayhoe.
Matt Kayhoe
Like you, Matt Kayhoe focuses on things he cares about. This is reflected in his longstanding commitment to science, engineering, and technology organizations, and the unique challenges faced by their leaders.
Innovation, creativity, and collaboration are the lifeblood of SciEnTech organizations. How do SciEnTech organizations create the conditions, encourage the behaviors, and provide the skills that lead to this? How do they keep the energy high, the cooperation humming, and the focus clear?
To help SciEnTech leaders do this, Matt brings his expertise on innovative cultures, leadership, and adult learning to SciEnTech Partners. Matt’s contribution comes from a blending of his abilities and three decades of experiences as a coach, thinking partner, business owner, and change consultant.
Matt’s first job was managing inventory control for a commercial printing company, with one foot in the front office and one on the plant floor. His next was his first SciEnTech role, in IT in a financial services company, designing systems in partnership with internal clients and as an advocate for new work processes. This brought him in direct contact with issues of change, resistance, and leadership, and led to his next role as a manager in organization and leadership development.
After a number of years working internally, Matt set up a consulting business, leading a few years later to a partnership with Diane Russ and the creation of SciEnTech Partners. As a consultant, his SciEnTech clients have included bio/pharm, chemical, health care, and technology. They have ranged from Fortune 50 to small business.
Matt also has assisted a number of technology startup companies, with lessons learned from both success and failure. This learning is also useful in mature organizations, as there are similar challenges and dynamics between the life of an innovation initiative and a startup business.
Matt is particularly interested in the “technical vs. leadership” career path decisions SciEnTechs face throughout their careers. He recognizes the importance of the passing of knowledge and wisdom from senior SciEnTechs to others, and the aspects of organizational culture that make doing so easy and normal.
Matt’s education includes an undergraduate degree in Management, and postgraduate programs in organizational theory and development at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland and NTL Institute. He serves as faculty for the Organizational Consulting and Change Leadership Program at Georgetown University.
Matt enjoys cycling, weeding out his library to create room for more, and fostering and re-homing dogs and cats. He also allocates a portion of his professional time to helping community organizations, with a history and expertise with Habitat for Humanity and other affordable housing organizations, and animal welfare and protection organizations.
Diane Russ
Diane appreciates the deep curiosity, resourcefulness and drive for solutions that guide most SciEnTechs, and the resiliency they can display when the answer seems to lie just out of reach. SciEnTech work is creative work, with all the plusses and minuses that come with that creativity. The creativity needs to be harnessed, nourished, and channeled in the best direction for innovative solutions to emerge.
How can a company better harness, facilitate and grow that kind of creativity? SciEnTechs have heavy influence on systems and processes that are fundamental to how a company functions. They are also critical to the company’s future growth – almost any innovation must be assessed, developed, and eventually put into place by SciEnTechs. Success for SciEnTechs begets success for the company.
Over many years of working with SciEnTechs, Diane has seen that the ability to effectively exchange ideas, query, challenge and lead others is equally critical to the actual technical or creative work. As a coach, she has fostered the development of individual and leadership skills to more effectively collaborate, lead, and innovate. As a consultant at a system level, she has helped optimize the personal, technical and creative skills of SciEnTechs by helping to build the types of cultures that support and are shaped by curiosity and learning.
Diane began her career as a SciEnTech — a research scientist — in the field of neuropsychology. Her consulting career began when she became more interested in how the relationships between scientists impacted the outcomes of the work in which they engaged. She has spent the last 3 decades working with SciEnTechs as a coach and thinking partner to help facilitate change and growth, shape their own leadership, and build the systems and skills for leading others effectively.
She is particularly interested in helping younger SciEnTechs develop the personal presence and relational skills critical to being seen, heard, and effectively utilized within their organizations. She’s also committed to helping senior SciEnTechs use their wealth of knowledge to mentor others — combining their solid experience and know-how with mindfulness and inquiry to facilitate new learning and innovation with others.
Diane was educated in psychology and organization behavior at Clark University, St. Louis University, and Stevens Institute of Technology, and is a graduate of several post-graduate programs at institutes such as Gestalt Institute of Cleveland and Gestalt International Study Center. Over the course of her career as a coach and change consultant, Diane’s work has spanned a wide range of industries, including consumer products, financial services, media, and telecommunications. Her work within the SciEnTech realm has included clients within biotech/pharma, chemicals, and technology.
Diane’s writings on leadership and effective work relationships have been featured in several leading journals, including Journal of Management Inquiry, Academy of Management Executive, Executive Excellence, and HR Professional. Earlier research papers can be found in American Journal of Psychiatry, and Archives of General Psychiatry.
Diane was raised in the colorful world of the US Marines during interesting times — she appreciates the challenges and opportunities of constant change. She enjoys cooking (especially bread), hiking, and listening to good jazz (is there any bad jazz?). She wants to live in a world where curiosity prevails over knowing, and hopes to one day take the trans-Siberian express for a second time.