Barry Dym
My blogs
| Industry | Non-Profit |
|---|---|
| Occupation | University teacher |
| Location | Lexington, MA, United States |
| Introduction | I’ve had a long and satisfying career, starting and directing a number of organizations, including the Family Institute of Cambridge (with my friends, David Kantor and Carter Umbarger) and the Boston Center for Family Health. I practiced psychotherapy for over 25 years I have offered strategic organizational consulting and executive coaching all along, for about 40 years. I would say that my main professional identity has been as both a frontline practitioner – someone who has tried in a very immediate way to help people and organizations to improve their lot – and as a teacher. But practice has never seemed enough, even when I’ve taught it to others. I’ve always felt the need to articulate the ideas that excite me, and I’ve done that in books about couples, therapy, change, and leadership (see below), by founding and edited a professional journal (with my friends, Michael Glenn and Don Block), Family Systems Medicine, and by writing too many articles. |
| Interests | Currently I am the Executive Director of the Institute for Nonprofit Management and Leadership (INML) at Boston University’s School of Management. We provide year-long certificate programs for both young and mature working executives, as well as a variety of seminars on diversity, board development, social media, and the like. It’s an exciting organization (if I do say so myself) that has just won The Boston Foundation’s Out of the Blue award, “…an unrestricted, unsolicited grant to an organization that has demonstrated extraordinary leadership and ability to create and sustain high-impact programming that sets a standard for other nonprofits and serves the community as a whole.” Here’s a link to our website: www.bu.edu/inml . |
| Favorite movies | My wife, Fran Jacobs, a professor of child and family policy at Tufts University, jokes that I have only a flimsy right to advise others on these matters because I’ve never had a “real” job in my life. Partly true. I’ve always created my own jobs, often by creating new organizations. A little quirky but it’s worked for me. |
| Favorite music | I’m married, with two children—four if you count my son-in-law and daughter-in-law, and I do, three grandchildren (13, 11, and 2) and a granddog, all living close by. In other words, I’m a lucky man. I’m 69 years old and occasionally think about retirement, especially when I feel that I’ve failed to deliver on one project or another. At such moments, it’s easy to conflate aging with even small failures, so although I occasionally consider stepping out of the public arena, I quickly dismiss the impulse to slow down. Instead, I just launch new projects, like this blog. |
| Favorite books | Books • Couples • Readiness and Change in Couple Therapy • Leadership in Nonprofit Organizations • Managing Leadership Transition |