Chaos Management Ltd.

Chaos Management, Ltd. brings learning, collaboration, and empowerment through training and consulting to groups and organizations so they can achieve their goals in an increasingly diverse environment.

Why “Chaos Management”?

We call our firm “Chaos Management” because the rapid pace of change in the 21st century creates the need to balance productivity with creativity, continuity with change, control with delegation, and competition with collaboration. Successful organizations continue to be successful because they provide members with opportunities for challenge and growth while maintaining continuity in a perpetually evolving environment.

Staff and Faculty

Evangelina Holvino, EdD

President

is president of Chaos Management, Ltd. and senior research faculty at the Center for Gender in Organizations, Simmons School of Management. She specializes in collaborative approaches to organization change and social justice, and the intersections of race, gender, and class. Evangelina has consulted to a wide range of for-profit and non-profit organizations in areas such as developing a nationwide network of health change consultants in Nigeria, designing and implementing global and local diversity strategies, developing and conducting educational programs in conflict management, and facilitating strategic planning processes. Since 1979 she has worked in the USA, Europe, Southeast Asia, West Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

Evangelina has a doctorate in organization development from the University of Massachusetts and has taught at the School for International Training, the University of Massachusetts, and at The American University/NTL Master’s program in human resource management. She is currently a member and previously served on the board of directors of the Boston Center of the A.K. Rice Institute and the NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Sciences. Evangelina is a founding member of Madrinas: A Latina Leaders Network, principal investigator of the research project Latinas at Work: Journeys to Leadership, and a member of the advisory boards of Working Mother Media Best Companies for Women of Color and the Diversity Factor.

James Cumming, EdD
Principal

is a principal of Chaos Management Ltd. and has over 25 years experience working as an international educator and consultant in technical, intercultural contexts within both public and private sectors in Europe, Asia, Africa, Middle East, and the United States. He brings extensive experience facilitating multicultural differences. He also specializes in creating effective conditions for dialogue, learning, and change in groups, organizations, and communities using approaches such as the Future Search Conference. James is the creator of the Problematic Moment Approach to finding underlying meaning in group dialogue.

He has master’s degrees in design engineering and international management, and a doctorate in international education from the University of Massachusetts. He is adjunct faculty at the School for International Training and a founding member of Future Search Network.

Bernardo M. Ferdman, PhD
Faculty

is a faculty member with Chaos Management and professor at the San Diego campus of the California School of Organizational Studies (CSOS) at Alliant International University. He has 20 years of experience as a consultant, teacher, and writer on issues of diversity and multiculturalism, ethnic and cultural identity in organizations, cross-cultural communication, Latinos/as in the workplace, leadership development, and organizational behavior, assessment, and change. Bernardo has published over three dozen books, articles, and book chapters and made numerous presentations in the areas of ethnic, cultural, and gender diversity, diversity training, and organizational psychology.

Bernardo received his doctorate in psychology from Yale University in 1987 and completed his undergraduate degree at Princeton University. He is division chair for the Academy of Management’s Gender and Diversity in Organizations Division. Bernardo is a charter fellow of the International Academy for Intercultural Research and a past president of the Interamerican Society of Psychology (SIP).

Josephine Laza Gallagher, MA
Faculty

is a faculty member with Chaos Management and a senior consultant for the FutureWork Institute. Josephine is a senior human resources professional with a successful history in managing, recruiting/staffing, compensation, training, organizational development, and diversity. She provides consultation and training to clients in change initiatives, with specialization in diversity and multicultural issues in the workplace including organizational assessments, summary documentation, strategic planning, and subsequent education processes.

Josephine received her bachelor’s degree and New York teacher certification from Marymount Manhattan College and master’s in French and Spanish literature from City University of New York. She is certified in the Myers Briggs Type Instrument, Rummler Brache-Work Process Analysis, Peter Block Consulting Skills, Carlson Learning DiSC Instrument, and Blessing White’s Managing Personal Growth Assessment tool. She is one of the founding members and program chair of Madrinas, a Latina Leaders national network, initiated during the 2001 Working Mother MediaWomen of Color Forum.

Plácida I. Gallegos, PhD
Faculty

is a faculty member with Chaos Management and a social psychologist who has spent her career in academia and organizations working to create healthier, more inclusive cultures where people can thrive and achieve their fullest potential. She provides organizational consulting to companies in the areas of strategic culture change, supervisory and management skills, leadership styles, career development, conflict management, and team building. She is on the faculty of Fielding Graduate University in the School of Human and Organization Development, teaching courses related to organizational effectiveness and diversity, supervising graduate-level research, and conducting her own studies of human and organizational behavior.

Plácida attended Loma Linda University and received her master’s degree in marriage, family, and child counseling. She conducted research in organizational behavior and enrolled in the social psychology graduate program at the University of California at Riverside where she received her second master’s degree and Ph.D. in 1987. Plácida has written articles and presented at numerous conferences throughout the country on a wide range of diversity and multicultural topics. She is also a member of the national Hispanic women’s organization, MANA, where she serves as development advisor to the board of directors.

David Luna, MBA, JD
Faculty

is a faculty member with Chaos Management and an organizational consultant who helps his clients use their core business strategies as anchors for their initiatives in the areas of leadership development, workforce diversity, change management, team effectiveness, and organizational design and planning. He has served major corporations, Internet start-ups, educational institutions, not-for-profit groups and government agencies. As Director of Diversity for Unicom, a Fortune 200 energy corporation, David redesigned the company’s diversity strategies and improved its national diversity ranking by nearly three quartiles over two years. As Chief Strategy Officer for an educational services firm serving K-12 markets he led and supported the development of forward-looking business strategies and models. Previously, David spent nearly a decade with the Latino Institute, an agency serving Chicago’s Hispanic population, where he held the positions of Director of Advocacy and Director of Leadership and Organizational Development.

David holds an MBA with concentrations in Finance, Electronic Commerce and Entrepreneurship from the University of Illinois and a law degree from the University of Chicago. He is a member of the National Society of Hispanic MBAs.

John Rodriguez, MA
Faculty

is a faculty member with Chaos Management and a consultant who brings over 20 years of marketing and community organizing experience to his work. Most recently John partnered with a national diversity management-consulting firm on the largest community intervention ever conducted in the United States. He has held executive-level positions within the marketing, communications, and advertising industries, where he incorporated the principles of inclusion and diversity to develop niche and multicultural marketing programs for companies such as Bausch and Lomb, Citibank, Eastman Kodak, and Exxon Mobil.

John holds a master’s degree in communications. He is co-founder and past president of the Rochester Hispanic Business Association and currently serves as president of the Latino Alliance of Western New York, a systems change advocacy organization. John is a Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leadership Fellow, certified Achieve Global/Zenger Miller trainer, Tavistock Graduate, and a member of the American Society for Training & Development.

Ann Wright, AA
Staff

has worked for Chaos Management, Ltd. since 2001, providing administrative support in their Brattleboro, Vermont office, and on-site support to faculty and participants of the Verizon Hispanic Professional Development Workshop. For more than 25 years she has worked as an administrative assistant and supervisor in the federal government, a member-owned natural foods wholesale distributor in the northeast, private companies, and the public service sector. Her career spans a variety of experiences including meeting facilitation, project management, graphic design, production and editing, resume design, and event planning.