Valerie Nellen is a senior partner at RHR, where her focus is on the firm’s unique proficiency as experts in human dynamics and capabilities that drive performance at the top of the house. Building on her personal and professional history, Val works with client organizations to empower people to know themselves differently, capitalize on their unique traits, and create value by fostering meaning and optionality.
Val has depth in specific industries including high tech, retail, natural resources, education-oriented nonprofits, and private equity. Her favorite client engagements are those where the leaders are energized about optimizing their influence on the ecosystems around them.
Prior to joining RHR, Val was a consultant, educator, and corporate executive with a focus on performance. She held internal roles in operations and human resources; she was an operations and supply chain consultant with PRTM; and she served as the executive director of executive education at UCI’s Paul Merage School of Business.
Val received a bachelor’s degree, cum laude, from Harvard University, where she earned a John Harvard Scholarship and Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Scholarship for academic distinction. Val’s doctorate in counseling psychology is from Virginia Commonwealth University; she graduated with distinction and a specialty in organizational development.
As a lifelong competitive swimmer and former Division I athlete in swimming and water polo, Val believes in a mind-body approach to effectiveness and wellness throughout life. The many summers that she worked as an ocean lifeguard at New York’s Jones Beach remain an enduring influence on her approach to people, opportunities, and risk. She is currently a member of the Laguna Beach Open Water Swimming pod.
Focus Areas
- CEO selection, advising, and transitions
- C-suite assessment and coaching— individuals and teams
- Strategic performance optimization for individuals, teams, and businesses
Special Skills
- Expertise across industries, business models, and economic drivers
- Deep psychological insight and connectedness to issues of core humanity
- Systemic relationships of long standing that enable value creation at the level of the function, business, or industry
Education
- Harvard University, bachelor’s degree, psychology, cum laude
- Virginia Commonwealth University, PhD, counseling psychology
Leadership philosophy
The Venn Diagram of Sun Tzu and Emily Post has as its overlap the supreme importance of self-awareness and attunement to others.
Passions
- Systems thinking and complex systems
- Mastery through deliberate practice
- Narrative and meaning-making
- Self-awareness and realization of human potential