Hendriks Consulting

Biography

About Alexandra

Alexandra Hendriks, President of Hendriks Consulting, brings more than 15 years experience as a fully bilingual (English & French) professional facilitator, change agent and evaluator working in the public, private and non-profit sectors. She is also a part-time professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Ottawa, where she teaches courses in organizational consulting and organizational change. She is a member of the International Association of Facilitators and the Canadian Evaluation Society.

Public Service Experience

During her five years in the federal public service, Alexandra worked for the Canada School of Public Service as a manager of evaluation and quality assessment and for the Department of Human Resources and Social Development Canada as a senior organization development consultant. In these roles, she was able to demonstrate her versatility and professionalism in juggling the demands of positions involving multiple stakeholders and competing deadlines.

Facilitation Experience

Over the course of her career, Alexandra has facilitated more than a hundred planning meetings, strategic planning sessions, team building sessions and focus groups. She has also facilitated action learning/peer coaching circles and conducted interviews with staff and executives at all levels. In 1997, she co-facilitated a summer institute at Harvard University.

Research Experience

Alexandra has extensive expertise in survey design, quality assessments, program evaluation, research and report writing. Prior to joining the federal government, Alexandra worked as a research coordinator for the Elisabeth Bruyère Research Institute and as a research associate for the Arizona Cancer Center. These positions involved managing and evaluating large-scale government-funded public health projects.

Alexandra has also worked as an internal consultant for MaPS, a Boston-based marketing research company (serving Fortune 500 clients such as AT&T, Disney, Monsanto and Heineken), for the Federal Communications Council and as an external consultant with public and private sector clients.

University Teaching

During the past fifteen years, Dr. Hendriks has designed and delivered courses at four different universities in North America. These courses have covered various facets of communications and change management. Courses designed and delivered include the following:

• Organizational Communication Consulting,
• Facilitating Organizational Change,
• Public Communication/Speech,
• Research methods,
• Applied Organizational Communication,
• Introduction to Mass Media Effects,
• Introduction to Communication Theory,
• Mass Communication.

In the process of preparing and delivering these courses, Alexandra has had to acquire and demonstrate

• Familiarity with ground-breaking theories and trends in communications;
• Expertise in applied areas such as public speaking, active listening, nonverbal communication, effective meetings, facilitation, coaching, communication planning and report writing;
• Ability to draw upon a variety of teaching techniques (including lectures, role plays, small group discussions, plenary discussions, case studies, videos, stories and examples) to appeal to various adult learning styles (visual, audio, kinaesthetic) and to keep the course interesting and dynamic.

Evaluation results for these courses have always been strong.

Education

Alexandra holds a PhD in communication from the University of Arizona (with a specialization in research methodologies and program evaluation) and a Masters of Science from Boston University in organizational communication. She is certified to administer the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI). She also completed the NTL Institute course "Diagnosing Organizations with Impact" in 2005.

Publications

Alexandra has authored numerous articles and research reports and has presented more than a dozen papers at national and international conferences in the areas of organizational, interpersonal and health communication.