Interview with Dr. Rachel Headley, a PHD scientist turned consultant! Dr. Headley is a Culture Change Strategist, Consultant, and TEDx Speaker.  In this episode, Dr. Headley shares how she made the leap from scientist to consultant, provides insights into her recent TEDx talk, and shares how you could create high performing teams in any work environment.

Listen to the Episode Here:
Interview with Dr. Rachel Headley
We’re going to be talking about high-performing teams. A topic that for me is near and dear to a lot of the work that I do. I’m excited about our guest. Her name is Dr. Rachel Headley. She is a PhD scientist turned consultant. She’s the Founder of the Rose Group International, a boutique consulting firm focused specifically on organizational cultures. Dr. Headley is also a coach and a TEDx speaker. We’re going to talk a little bit about high performing teams, talk about her journey and how she made that transition from being in the science field and going into more of a consultancy space. We’ll also talk a little bit about her TEDx journey as well and some of the things that she shares. Rachel, thank you so much for joining us on the show. How are you doing?
Thanks for having me. I am great.
We’re going to have a great conversation about a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I know it is to other go-getters out there around high-performing teams. I want to take a step back and would love for you to introduce yourself to the go-getters of the show.
I go by Dr. Rachel Headley because I spent a lot of my life as a PhD scientist working with satellite data on the Landsat satellite mission for the first several years of my career. In the second several years of my career, I spent as the Operational Science Officer of that same mission. That’s what got me excited about high performing teams. It’s not some magic thing that you do. It’s a leadership choice. About a few years ago I started business consulting around high intellect, high tech, high science companies.
I continue to hear people that are scientists or in the science in that space that’s transitioning into consulting. That seems to be a trend I’ve seen over the years. How did you decide that was the pivot you wanted to do?
These days, especially for independent people, as young individuals we go into college thinking we have to decide on the thing and then we do the thing. Over our life, we wander around and find the next fun thing to do. I still love science. My TEDx was connected to science with the humanity part of the world. I love all of that. An interesting thing about science is what we do in science. At least in the science I do is we take different ideas and try to find the commonalities and the connections across different disciplines and try to bring together a whole story.
The reason I love business consulting so much is because that’s what we do as business consultants. As your go-getter audience knows is go into a client organization and we try to figure out what’s going on from everyone’s perspective and how can we put together a whole picture. The mechanics of it are similar. The older I got, the more I realize that it’s all about the humans. It’s all about the people and how we all interact as a team and interact together and how do we make our lives better every day. That’s how my life merged from hard science to leadership in a big science team into the business world where I now still help grow and create teams in a slightly different way.
It sounds like there are synergies within consulting and the science disciplines. What would you say is your definition of a great consultant?
A great consultant is someone who has the knowledge that it takes to provide value to their clients.