Leslie Pratch is the founder and CEO of Pratch & Company. A clinical psychologist and M.B.A., she specializes in helping private equity investors and public and privately-held companies identify whether the executives being considered to lead companies possess the psychological resources and personality strengths needed to succeed.

Her assessments are called Active Coping Assessments © and are grounded in the research model and methods she developed in research she led at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She continues to refine her model through ongoing empirical research in the field. She makes use of this research also in coaching executives on how to improve their functioning so as to deal successfully with the crises that face CEOs and other top executives.

Leslie Pratch began her consulting career as a Ph.D. candidate in Human Development at The University of Chicago. In 1988, Arthur Andersen hired Leslie, who was still pursuing her doctorate, to advise on various strategic initiatives, including partner development. Could personality traits important to the success of the firm’s senior partners be cultivated in promising junior partners? Arthur Andersen continued to use the program she created for at least ten years.

As her interests evolved away from academia and toward consulting, Leslie transferred to Northwestern University, an accredited clinical program where in 1995 she completed her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. Her research focused on what makes business leaders successful: Do a firm’s most capable leaders possess personality characteristics that can be identified years before these executives are ready to assume senior positions? In 1990,The University of Chicago Booth School of Business hired Leslie to lead research into this question. Based on the strength of her findings, Leslie was again hired to replicate the findings. They were, leading to publications in three of the most prestigious academic journals.

As a post-doctoral fellow, Leslie also advised senior officers of the State Farm Insurance Companies, where she created a library of competencies for use in performance evaluation throughout the entire company. As her consulting focused more on successful senior executives, Leslie enrolled in the M.B.A. program at The University of Chicago for training in two areas about which she knew close to nothing before: economics and finance.

Since 1998, Leslie’s consulting has emphasized assessing and developing executives and succession planning. Her client base includes corporations and professional service firms. Since 2002, she has focused primarily on helping private equity investors to reduce the risk of investing in uncertain management capability.

Leslie’s clinical skills combined with her business training give her insight into the human dimensions of strategy – where the company’s success will be driven largely by the personality dynamics of the senior executives charged with carrying out corporate strategy. In addition to her consulting work, Leslie actively conducts research and publishes in peer-reviewed journals in the area of successful business leadership and personality assessment. She is currently working on a book tentatively titled GOOD ON PAPER.

Leslie Pratch received her B.A. with honors from Williams College, an M.A. in Human Development from The University of Chicago, an M.B.A. in Strategy and Finance from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Northwestern University.