Ann Cohen

Ann Cohen is an executive business consultant who founded Ann Cohen & Associates in 1999 combining her business and nonprofit experience to enable organizations to identify and achieve their strategic goals. Working in partnership with her clients, she brings thought leadership and comprehensive planning for effective strategy and governance. Her consulting spans board development, management effectiveness, strategic planning, and comprehensive program design. She believes in ‘making it work’ and thus delivers the leadership training, coaching, conflict resolution and learning required to lead, implement action and continue the learning.

Ann is also a BoardSource Senior Governance Consultant, and is a frequent contributor to BoardSource publications and knowledge forums.

Her clients include private foundations, public charity boards, corporations and government entities. Ann works with chairs and key executives seeking to create a leadership culture of high performance enabling the organizations to achieve higher levels of governance, organizational excellence, and strategic focus. Her clients include national, regional and international organizations including the Anti-Defamation League, Alliance to Make US Healthiest, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, Russell Berrie Foundation, Hebrew Free Loan Society, Intellectual Property Owners Association, NYU Leadership Initiative, Hillel International, DOROT, Inc., Goodwill of the Greater East Bay, Butler Family Foundation, Jewish Agency for Israel, The Washington Center, as well as the United States Department of Justice, the Department of Agriculture Hass Avocado and Cotton Boards, corporations such as BP, Thrivent Financial, Chevron, Medtronic, Cardinal IP, Crossroads Systems and SRA.

Ann’s early career, which provides the roots of her consulting practice, includes over 25 years as a Vice President at EDS, now HP and as a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice. At EDS, she established several business units, in the financial markets, law enforcement and aeronautics, developing and growing them to over $3.5 billion in revenue. As an attorney, she handled federal cases across the country and in the U.S. Supreme Court. She lives what she does; having served on many non-profit boards in the areas of social justice, education, religion and community building. Among the honors for which she is most proud are her service as a founding board member of the re-established United Way of the National Capitol Area; her selection as a “Federal 100” winner, an award naming the top information technology executives from government and industry; her appointment to the United States-Israel Science and Technology Commission and her service on the board of HIAS, a global organization that protects and resettles refugees.

Ann is Washington, DC based. She graduated cum laude from Clark University with a Bachelor of Arts degree and earned her juris doctor degree from Antioch School of Law.

Partnership in a Time of Pandemic: The CEO and the Board

Posted by Ann Cohen on Apr 17, 2020 11:29:59 AM

In a time of crisis, and certainly we are in such a time, it’s not on the chief executive to do it all. Today, it is imperative that we look to the partnership between the chief executive and the board. It is the community they form that must step up.

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Topics: board-chief executive partnership, COVID-19

The Board–Chief Executive Partnership: Valuing Our Respective Lanes

Posted by Ann Cohen on Jan 24, 2019 12:24:47 PM

In The Source, a text designed to inspire nonprofit boards to operate at the highest and best use of their collective capacity, the first principle is having a constructive partnership between the board and the chief executive:

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Topics: board-chief executive partnership

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