Michele Pekar is Executive Director and Founding Partner of Co-Dev, a consulting firm specialising in negotiation, mediation, facilitation and leadership. She has more than 15 years of experience in negotiation and coaching in Asia, Europe and North America and delivers negotiation and leadership training to corporate executives, diplomats at the United Nations and in the following universities:
- Oxford Programme on Negotiation
- Kedge Business School Paris-Bordeaux-Marseille
- Mannheim Business School
- University of Corsica
Michele was trained in negotiation at Harvard and is Editor of the bestseller: The First Move: A Negotiator’s Companion. Lempereur, A. and A. Colson. Chichester: Wiley, 2010.
Michele started her career in politics as a legislative aide for the President of the Wisconsin State Senate from 1988-1990. During that time, she worked on various legislative bills and served as a liaison between the senator, public, and the press.
She has worked in annual and major gifts fundraising at Harvard University from 1990-1995. Notably, she has worked for the deputy director of major gifts and was responsible for coordinating fundraising activities for high-level donors. She participated in The University Campaign to raise $2.1 billion.
From 1996-2011, she was the director of international development at Essec Business School – Paris & Singapore. As a senior executive of the school, she developed international public relations and marketing strategies and managed a team engaged in diverse international activities. For over ten years Michele developed, negotiated, and managed the international program portfolio and built double-degree programs through sponsorship with companies. Michele was a member and senior trainer of the Essec Institute for Education and Research on Negotiation in Europe (Irene) until 2011.
Michele has a Bachelor in Arts in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and a Master’s Degree in Theological Studies from Harvard University. She is bilingual English-French, having lived more than 15 years in France. Her current research focuses on recognizing and managing emotions in negotiation and mediation meetings and the links between negotiation and leadership. She is eMETT 3.0 and eSETT 3.0 certified at the expert level by the Paul Ekman Group, LLC.