THUNDERBIRD LEADERSHIP CONSULTING
Our Story
Built on Relationships. Grounded in Research. Designed to Endure.
Thunderbird Leadership Consulting has been built on a simple belief: when people lead with intention, connect authentically, and work together differently, organizations become stronger.
What began as a vision to help leaders and teams navigate complexity has evolved into a trusted leadership consulting practice serving organizations across healthcare, higher education, nonprofits, and beyond. Along the way, our work has grown, our team has expanded, and the challenges facing leaders have changed. What has remained constant is our commitment to people, relationships, and the belief that leadership has the power to transform organizations.
Thunderbird Leadership Consulting’s Original Logo.
WHERE WE BEGAN
An idea that was both practical and ambitious.
Thunderbird Leadership Consulting began in November 2006 with an idea that was both practical and ambitious: build a leadership consulting firm that could make a meaningful difference for organizations and create something that would endure beyond its founders.
The roots of Thunderbird began even earlier with Dorothy Sisneros’ consulting work through Sisneros & Associates and later Sisneros Consulting. As the work grew, so did the vision. Amy Steinbinder joined Dorothy, initially part-time, bringing complementary strengths and a shared belief that leadership development could be more than training. Together, they began building what would become Thunderbird Leadership Consulting.
From the beginning, their strengths were different, and intentionally so. Amy brought a deep commitment to research, frameworks, and methodology. Dorothy had an instinct for taking those concepts and turning them into experiences that leaders could immediately apply inside their organizations.
That combination became part of Thunderbird’s DNA:
Ground the work in research.
Make it practical.
Build it around people.
And create something that lasts.
HOW WE EVOLVED
From Leadership Development to Leadership Transformation
Healthcare was one of Thunderbird’s earliest proving grounds.
The work initially centered on patient experience, service excellence, leadership development, and executive coaching. What began with work across 16 hospitals eventually expanded into responsibility for service excellence across approximately 60 hospitals in a national system. A strong partnership with internal leaders shaped the experience, and many leaders took the framework, philosophy, and methodology with them into their next experiences and applied it to create optimized, energized cultures.
Thunderbird developed a train-the-trainer model, facilitated regional meetings, and connected leaders through monthly calls. This was long before virtual collaboration became commonplace. The goal was never simply to deliver a program. It was to help the work become part of the fabric of the organization.
That distinction mattered.
It reinforced something that would shape the firm’s philosophy for years to come: lasting change happens when leadership practices become part of how an organization operates, not simply something leaders learn in a workshop.
Those early healthcare relationships also revealed another pattern that has followed Thunderbird throughout its history.
When leaders moved to new organizations, they often took Thunderbird with them. Clients became colleagues. Colleagues became friends. Leaders introduced Thunderbird to other leaders and organizations. One engagement led to another, sometimes years later and in an entirely different organization or industry.
Thunderbird grew largely because relationships grew.
Dorothy Sisneros, Kim Després, and Amy Steinbinder
Dorothy Sisneros, Linn Billingsley, and Amy Steinbinder – Planning in Vancouver
Discovering That Leadership Transcends Industries
Education became another important chapter in Thunderbird’s evolution.
Dorothy had the opportunity to serve as an internal consultant with a large Community College system and to work with college presidents and executive leaders. This demonstrated that the approach Thunderbird had developed in healthcare translated remarkably well to higher education.
The context was different. The leadership challenges often were not.
Executives still needed trusted partners. Teams still needed to build trust and navigate conflict. Organizations still needed leaders who could move beyond their individual responsibilities and think collectively about the whole organization.
Relationships with key leaders helped expand Thunderbird’s work within higher education.
Over time, Thunderbird’s reach continued to grow across healthcare, higher education, government, nonprofit, and other organizational settings.
WHAT HAS ENDURED
Leadership is deeply human work.
The Whole Puzzle
Coaching has been embedded in Thunderbird’s work from the beginning.
Early on, Dorothy and Amy recognized that organizations could not create meaningful transformation by addressing one piece of leadership in isolation.
Executive teams mattered. Leadership teams mattered. Culture mattered. The experience of employees, patients, customers, learners, and communities mattered. And individual leaders needed a confidential place to think, question, learn, and grow.
Thunderbird began looking at what Dorothy and Amy described as the whole puzzle.
That philosophy eventually evolved into what Thunderbird now calls Teaming plus Context-based coaching, although the work existed long before it had a formal name.
Rather than simply developing individual leaders, Thunderbird works with leadership from the C-suite throughout the organization, connecting individual leadership behavior with team effectiveness, culture, strategy, and organizational performance.
We listen. We notice. We connect dots. We cross-pollinate. We share best practices.
And we help leaders distinguish between an isolated event and an emerging organizational pattern.
That perspective has become one of Thunderbird’s greatest strengths.
Creating Experiences Leaders Remember
Thunderbird has never believed that leadership development has to happen in a conference room. Over the years, learning has happened in some unexpected places.
A women’s CEO gathering took place aboard a catamaran on Lake Tahoe. Chief Nursing Officer intensives brought senior healthcare leaders together. Ten CEOs gathered not simply to learn content, but to learn from one another. An innovation experience for a large hospital on Mission Beach challenged leaders to think differently about what it would mean to innovate like Apple.
There were summits, executive intensives, leadership retreats, coaching engagements, team development programs, service excellence initiatives, and organization-wide transformations.
The setting and content changed. The philosophy did not.
Bring the right people together. Create the conditions for meaningful conversation. Introduce ideas that challenge their thinking. Then help them translate insight into action.
Dorothy Sisneros and Amy Steinbinder – 2015
Research + Application + Innovation
Throughout Thunderbird’s history, research remained a non-negotiable.
We stay current on the research. We examine emerging ideas. We interview leaders. We look for themes across organizations and industries. And then we ask the question that has shaped Thunderbird from the beginning:
How do we make this useful?
That combination of research and application led to published work, original frameworks, and approaches that grew directly from what Thunderbird was learning alongside its clients.
It also created a culture of continual reinvention.
When new team members joined Thunderbird, they brought different perspectives and talents. Their contributions helped shape new dimensions of the firm, including Thunderbird’s Guiding Principles and the reminder that culture is built not only through frameworks and strategies, but through creativity, humor, connection, and shared experiences.
As new consultants and leaders joined Thunderbird, the firm continued to evolve by doing something its founders had practiced from the beginning:
Find talented people. Understand what they uniquely bring. Then give them room to bring it.
WHAT HAS ENDURED
Trusted enough to tell the truth.
Perhaps the best measure of Thunderbird’s impact cannot be found in the number of programs delivered or organizations served.
It is found in trust.
Over the years, Thunderbird has become the call many leaders make when something important is happening.
A leadership transition. A struggling executive team. A cultural challenge. A difficult decision. An opportunity that requires a different way of thinking. Our role is not always to tell leaders what they want to hear.
Thunderbird has built its reputation by being willing to tell the truth with care, respect, evidence, and an unwavering belief in people’s capacity to grow.
We have also become matchmakers, connecting leaders with the right coaches, organizations with the right resources, and sometimes clients with one another.
That cross-pollination is part of what Thunderbird brings to every engagement. After working across hundreds of leaders and organizations, we can see connections that may not be visible from inside a single organization.
We can recognize patterns. We can bring ideas from one sector into another. And we can create opportunities for leaders to learn from people they might otherwise never meet.
The Next Chapter
From the beginning, Thunderbird was intended to have a legacy beyond its founders.
Nearly twenty years later, that vision is becoming reality. Thunderbird is once again doing what it has helped leaders and organizations do for decades:
Navigate change intentionally. Develop the next generation. Honor what has worked. Let go of what no longer serves. And create space for what comes next.
New leaders and consultants are bringing their own perspectives, strengths, and ideas to Thunderbird. Just as Dorothy and Amy learned to leverage their complementary talents, the next generation is being encouraged to evolve the work rather than simply replicate it.
Because preserving a legacy does not mean preserving everything exactly as it was. It means preserving what matters most.
For Thunderbird, that means remaining grounded in research while staying intensely practical. Seeing the whole organization rather than a single leadership challenge. Building authentic relationships. Being responsive when leaders need us. Recognizing and leveraging people’s strengths. Creating connections across organizations and industries. And being trusted enough to tell the truth.
Most importantly, it means remembering something our clients have taught us repeatedly over the past two decades:
WHAT HAS ENDURED
Leadership transformation happens through relationships.
Programs matter. Models matter. Research matters. But people change organizations.
And for nearly two decades, Thunderbird Leadership Consulting has had the privilege of helping them do exactly that.
Our history gives us roots. Our relationships give us strength. And our next chapter gives us the opportunity to keep evolving.
YOU’RE PART OF OUR STORY
Your story is part of ours.
Thunderbird’s story has never belonged only to us. It has been shaped by the leaders, organizations, colleagues, consultants, and friends who have been part of our journey.
Were you part of Thunderbird’s story? We’d love to hear from you.
Share a memory, a moment that made a difference, something you learned, or simply tell us where our paths crossed. Your stories help us celebrate where we’ve been and carry the best of Thunderbird forward into what comes next.
Have a Thunderbird memory you would like to share? We would be glad to hear it. Use our contact form to send your story. If we would like to feature your story, we will contact you separately prior to publishing.
Organizational capability is how sustainable performance is built.
Across every chapter, Thunderbird has remained grounded in research, practical in application, and built through trusted relationships. As the work continues to evolve, those commitments remain the thread connecting where Thunderbird began to what comes next.
Across every chapter, Thunderbird has remained grounded in research, practical in application, and built through trusted relationships. As the work continues to evolve, those commitments remain the thread connecting where Thunderbird began to what comes next.
