Bio
Erica Peng is a coach and educator whose approach to leadership development confronts a significant organizational blind spot: knowledge and shared values are not enough to address the complex and pressing issues of our time. Erica equips leaders, teams, and organizations with critical social-emotional skills and body-based somatic practices that empower them to accomplish shared goals:
Build trust and meaningful connection amidst inevitable challenges of difference, misunderstanding, and a societal context of crisis and uncertainty.
Become aware of – and interrupt – unconscious and heightened reactivity shaped by system-level dynamics involving race, gender, other dimensions of social identity, as well as the stress of the global pandemic.
Repair and rebuild connection and partnership after inevitable interpersonal and team breakdowns.
Transform limiting internal barriers – imposter syndrome, inner critic, shame, blame, and self-righteousness – into grounded presence and resilience.
These are the skills we needed to learn in school and life, but didn’t. Without them, our unconscious reactivity limits and undermines our best efforts and intentions to fulfill individual and collective potential.
Erica’s coaching and teaching are based on her methodology, Designed For Connection, which draws on neuroscience, systems thinking, interpersonal and group dynamics, intersectionality, proven body-based somatic practices, and community-based approaches to healing grief and trauma. Designed for Connection is the cornerstone of the course she teaches at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, “Interpersonal Skills and Embodied Leadership.” It is one of the most in-demand courses in the MBA program.
Having lived and worked in Asia and Latin America, Erica speaks Mandarin and Spanish and brings nuanced skill and awareness around culture and intersectionality, as she partners with leaders to work through challenges – and awaken possibility – at individual, interpersonal, team, organization, and system levels.