Merrilee Buchanan brings more than 20 years of experience developing people to the Five Degrees team. A big-picture thinker, Merrilee is passionate about leadership, strategy, and challenging the seemingly impossible. She loves working with individuals and teams to define their visions and values to develop their lives and workplace cultures "by design", uncovering their strengths and setting in motion the shifts in thinking and behavior to make real and lasting change. Her warmth, authenticity and gentle humor put others at ease, helping them connect to their own passions and goals, and find the motivation, energy and pace for their change trajectory.
Merrilee's experience includes work with companies large and small, from a diverse cross section of industries, including IT, sales, marketing, media, transportation, consumer packaged goods, arts and entertainment, finance, government, engineering, and health care. Her specialty is executive coaching and leadership development, and particularly loves working with high potential women to expand their leadership capabilities through her work at Chocolate Villa. She is most interested in developing others to see their potential and seek their "next".
Her dual-track career in behavioral health management and organizational development gives her the advantage of applying the basics of behavioral change at both the individual and organizational levels. With a BS in Communication and a Masters in Social Work, Merrilee has also worked as faculty for McKinsey Consulting and as a senior consultant for the Larcen Consulting Group.
Merrilee lives in Park City, Utah, and loves spending time in the outdoors hiking, bicycling, fly-fishing and skiing. She is interested in adventure in all forms, loves to travel, write, learn new things, or just hang out with her grown children, grandchildren and good friends. Merrilee lives to expand joy, creativity, playfulness, purpose and connection in her life, work and relationships.