Who Is Debra Condren, Ph.D.?
Debra Condren Ph.D. is a researcher, clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist-turned business psychologist, executive coach, entrepreneur, bestselling author, speaker, and career advisor. Dr. Debra Condren is on a mission to inspire people to make the contribution they were born to make doing meaningful, challenging, lucrative work.
Debra is known for her keen ability to quickly identify untapped strengths plus psychological blind spots and skills deficits in executive coaching clients, retooling them & turning them around to become engaged and winning contributors, innovators, and leaders. Her clients appreciate her humor, frank insights, and fast-paced, collaborative, roll-up-our-sleeves approach tailored to efficiently deliver what each client needs to rapidly realize target goals.
Debra is the founder and principal of Manhattan Business Coaching LLC, a New York- and San Francisco-based executive coaching and leadership development firm. She also founded the Women’s Business Alliance, an organization that served as a motivational think tank for 3,500 women over seventeen years, including facilitating twice-monthly executive mastermind roundtable luncheons for over seven years followed by a decade of Expert Briefs tele-seminars and webinars. The U.S. Small Business Administration recognized Debra’s work with a “Women In Business Advocate of the Year 2000” award.
Debra has coached over 5,000 clients—men and women—including: executives of start-ups, small-, mid-, and large-cap companies; professionals focused on performance and career development; small business owners and consultants; budding entrepreneurs; and college-bound students and recent graduates. Her partial client list includes testing-based executive coaching, organizational and leadership development work, selection assessment, derailment turnaround, and succession planning coaching with individuals and groups from the following companies or organizations: Google, Roche/Genentech, 3M, Stanford University, Cancer Treatment Centers of America, Siemens, Medtronic, Chevron, Sprint, American Red Cross, YWCA, Whole Child Initiative (a Dr. Jane Goodall and Marion Wright Edelman project), Immigration and Naturalization Service, City of San Jose, Federal Reserve Bank, Children’s Hospital and Research Center, T. Rowe Price Associates, Pacific Bell, Hewlett-Packard, Coldwell Banker, J.P. Morgan, Incyte Genomics, and many others.
Debra’s speaking engagements have included: over 300 live Women’s Business Alliance executive roundtables; New York Women’s Agenda, New York University; Columbia University’s Women in Business; Boardroom Bound and Women’s Initiative Pipeline Diversity Training, Harvard Club New York City; Fordham University M.B.A. program; Women’s Campaign Fund, Parties of Your Choice, honored guest speaker, multiple years; Women’s Financial Association of San Francisco; Women Who Launch; plus numerous keynotes and motivational presentations for private and publicly-traded companies.
Born and raised in Arkansas, Debra earned her BS in psychology and sociology (double major) from the University of Tulsa, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology, focusing on the psychological study of social issues, from the California School of Professional Psychology in Berkeley/Alameda, California. Debra completed a post-doctoral fellowship in neuropsychology and neuropsychological assessment while simultaneously leading a year-long multidisciplinary study on “Psychosocial Recovery Following Serious, Unexpected Physical Trauma” at the University of California San Francisco and San Francisco General Hospital. Debra completed a subsequent post-doctoral fellowship in neuropsychological assessments that included doing forensic evaluations for the courts in Marin County, California.
Following several years working as a licensed clinical psychologist and neuropsychological forensic evaluator in private practice, Debra found herself yearning to sunbathe in a different kind of light. Inspired by a business article profiling what struck her as an intriguing up-and-coming field, she decided to start her own executive coaching and career-advising firm. Unlike today, at that time career and executive coaching were barely on the radar; this was a brand-new, emerging specialty. Debra’s psychologist colleagues said, “You’re crazy to do this. It’s career suicide.” But this was an ambition she yearned to fulfill.
And so she jumped right in, landing an apprenticeship with a leading business psychologist and additionally completing advanced training in industrial organizational and business psychology, leadership and executive coaching, and business psychology psychometric assessment certification. After completing a year-long mentoring program in San Francisco for women entrepreneurs while running her executive coaching business, Debra was inspired to launch the Women’s Business Alliance just north of San Francisco in 1997.
In addition to writing a weekly career column that ran for three years for Metro New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, Debra’s advice has been featured in major media outlets including: New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, ABC’s Nightline, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, BusinessWeek, Inc., Fast Company, Entrepreneur, CNN, Oprah and Friends Radio, NPR’s Morning Edition, Forbes, Fox Television National News, Goodhousekeeping, and numerous national radio appearances. Today, she hosts a weekly AMBITION radio show that airs on WebTalkRadio.net and over 150 terrestrial affiliate stations.
Debra encourages her clients to recognize that they owe it to themselves – and the world – to make the contribution they were born to make: “The world deserves to hear from you.”