Gillien is a professional consultant and facilitator. In that capacity, she has taught negotiation and difficult conversations workshops for professionals across the U.S. in a variety of industries, including biotech, computer software, and financial services, as well as at several top teaching hospitals in Boston. At Harvard University, she teaches leadership programs for administrators across all campuses. In addition, she has taught workshops for attorneys in a variety of practice areas – corporate, intellectual property, litigation, and family law – in the US and Europe. In the public sector, Gillien has mediated contract negotiations; facilitated strategic planning retreats; managed conversations between disputing team-members; facilitated problem-solving workshops; and led a multi-year, multi-stakeholder collaboration. She consults to companies and non-profit groups on team-building, leadership development, and inter-organizational conflict.
Gillien is particularly interested in helping groups and individuals negotiate and collaborate effectively. Her practice is guided by theories of interest-based negotiation developed by the Harvard Negotiation Project; by her work on team dynamics with Dialogix and David Kantor, author of Reading the Room: Group Dynamics for Coaches and Leaders; and by her work with Ronald Heifetz, author of Leadership Without Easy Answers, who teaches leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Gillien received her B.A., summa cum laude from Yale University, her M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.