About

Picture
Meet Dr. Ginny Belden Charles. A consultant, educator, manager and coach with a 30-year proven record of bringing people together to address complex challenges.

Ginny’s clients range from individual leaders to large, cross-sector projects. They include large and small business, nonprofits and education, government and community organizations. She develops customized processes that work with clients’ unique situations to make strategic change, develop teams and strengthen leadership. Her extensive background and toolkit give her clients the right process, story, exercise, framework or action they need to move forward.

In addition to an active consulting practice, Ginny served as director of the Taos Institute MSc in Relational Leading, offered in collaboration with the Professional Development Foundation and Middlesex University in London. She serves as an advisor to the board of directors of the Taos Institute. Ginny completed her PhD at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. She has served as adjunct faculty for St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Mn and for Pepperdine University's MSOD program, where she completed her master's in organization development as a Bush Fellow in 1991. 

As a founding partner of Waterline Consulting from 1991-2009, Ginny co-created the Waterline Coaching method, used by thousands of line managers for innovative, inquiry-based coaching. In 2006, Waterline Consulting was awarded the national "2006 Top Champion Award" by the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) for "modeling and embedding the culture and values of facilitative leadership...to help leaders, teams and organizations develop insight and increase innovation."

In 1998, Ginny and her two partners co-founded the Center for Emerging Leadership and its Women's Leadership Community (WLC), a learning community involving over 100 women leaders in MN and Canada that supports women in bringing their whole selves to their work and into the world.

Prior to that, Ginny managed Human Resources at the Conklin Company and St. Paul Companies, and managed Leadership and Organization Development at Diversified Energies Inc.

Training & Certification

  • Institute of Cultural Affairs: Technology of Participation (mentor trainer)
  • Interaction Associates: Facilitative Leader
  • Power and Systems: The Organization Workshop
  • Hosting Methods: Open Space, World Café, Appreciative Inquiry
  • Barry Johnson: Polarity Management
  • Instruments: Firo-B, Meyers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Learning Styles Inventory (LSI)

Published Works

  • "Emerging Voices"( 2006 – 2009) column for Minnesota Women's Press
  • The Revised Change Handbook (2007), chapter on Action Learning, Berrett Koehler publishers
  • My Story Listens to Your Story (2004) contributing author
  • Towards the Learning Organization: A Guide (1994)