Leslie Dashew has combined her background in organizational development and family therapy to specialize in consultation to family businesses and families of wealth, as well as other organizations, private and public. She has been in practice for over 30 years and is now located in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Leslie helps individuals and organizations chart the course of their future. Her work with family businesses includes prevention of serious problems by helping clients establish the policies, practices and skills of healthy family organizations. She also works with families who are in severe conflict to help them untangle the knots between family and business issues. Leslie's clients come from large and small businesses throughout the U.S. and abroad, in many different industries. Her expertise lies in helping these clients create harmony in the family and prosperity in the business. Leslie also works with families of wealth to help identify a shared vision and strategies to help families optimize the impact of wealth on the family and its interests. While Leslie has worked extensively with family-owned businesses, she has not lost touch with her roots in consulting with leaders, boards and teams in other organizations as well.

Leslie’s work includes:

Providing counsel to leaders

Building Teams

Assessment of the family and business

Development of a shared vision for family and its assets

Creation of practical plans to achieve the vision

Develop clients’ skills, knowledge and share perspectives

Design/facilitation of family meetings and family councils

Enhance effectiveness of boards and foundations

Resolution of difficult conflicts

On-going support and advice to assure continued success

Facilitation and change management services

Leslie has written three books. She is a co-author of Working With Family Businesses, A Guide For Professionals, published by Jossey-Bass. Leslie's second book, The Best of The Human Side was published in October of 1997. Her third book, Health, Wealth and Families: How to Assure Your Wealth Helps, Not Hurts, Your Family was published in January of 2003. She is often quoted, and her writing on family business issues can be found in popular business and trade magazines including Nation's Business, INC, Black Enterprise, Entrepreneur, USA Today and many others. She was recently featured in an interview in the Nepali publication, The Organization, and in Professional Builder magazine.

Leslie speaks widely at academic, professional and trade associations. She presents workshops and seminars for companies across the U.S. and abroad. She is renowned for her interactive programs on family business issues, management, leadership, team building, change and stress management, as well as individual and interpersonal effectiveness.

Leslie also conducts training for professional and trade associations such as YPO (Young Presidents Organization), American Institute of CPAs, Society of the Plastics Industry, American Hotel and Motel Association, American Society for Training and Development, Family Firm Institute, Attorneys for Family Held Enterprises (AFHE) as well as Family Business Educational Forums, Universities, Chambers of Commerce and Small Business Development Centers.

As a family therapist as well as an organizational development consultant, Leslie's insights are also shared individually and in workshops on managing "problem" employees, chemical dependency, communication skills, stress and change management and overcoming barriers to professional effectiveness.

Leslie has served in many volunteer and professional organizations on boards and committees including the Board of Trustees of Pitzer College, the Scottsdale Center for the Arts, Women Business Owners, Inc., the Scottsdale Cultural Council, the Council For Children, the Family Firm Institute (which recently recognized Leslie's contributions by naming her a "fellow" of the organization), the Georgia Coalition on Consultation, Education and Prevention, the Mental Health Association, and the Governor's Council on Child and Adolescent Mental Health. She was named One of The Ten Outstanding Young People of Atlanta and recently was elected to the International Women's Forum.

Leslie's undergraduate degree in psychology is from Pitzer College (1970), her graduate degree in psychiatric social work is from the University of Michigan. She served on the Emory University Medical School Faculty in Psychiatry for 6 years. Her best education has come from her daughter, Baleigh who is 26 years old, and her husband Jack Salisbury.