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Our Founder

Edward Groody is a leading Community Building thought leader, author, and teacher. He is founder, CEO and Senior Trainer, of Community Building International (CBI), a global training, certification, and consulting firm. CBI is also a global network of professional, certified Community Building facilitators.

Edward has devoted a lifetime to spreading the vision and experience of peace and genuine Community into diverse settings and sectors. He is committed is to making the experience of genuine Community commonplace and abundant everywhere for everyone. 

He is one of a handful of individuals to train and work with his mentor and colleague M. Scott Peck, M.D., renowned bestselling author of The Road Less Traveled and The Different Drum, and developer of the original Community Building (CB) process.  Edward is committed to preserving and protecting the integrity of Dr. Peck’s work while also offering new CB formats to meet today’s many urgent challenges. 

groody teaching

Originally coming from a business background, Edward is also President of Ed Groody & Associates, Inc., an organization development consulting firm. He and his team of consultants have been helping companies get exceptional business results and create a Spirit of Community in the workplace since 2001. He has facilitated highly successful financial and cultural turnarounds, team development projects, and change efforts in healthcare, manufacturing, entertainment, and government. They specialize in helping implement change in a way that engages and honors people. Prior to founding his consulting firm, Edward served as Director of Organization Development with Covenant Health, a large health care system in East Tennessee, USA.  Following the many impacts of Covid in 2020-21, he now devotes the majority of his time is writing about and teaching Community Building, and leading CBI.

 Edward was part of the founding group that organized and facilitated the first men’s conferences in the 1980-90s with Robert Bly, renowned poet and grandfather of the men’s movement. He is a longtime student of contemplative and mindfulness meditation practices. In addition to his full-time Community Building consulting and training, he leads sacred poetry meditation, centering prayer, and other mindfulness/contemplative workshops for businesses, retreat centers, universities and religious groups. Edward’s new books From Chaos to Community: Essential Community Building and Civility Skills, and Sacred Poetry Meditation will be released in 2024.

Testimonials

Working with Edward Groody

I have experienced the power and potential of CB after participating in a Workshop with Edward Groody. His supportive facilitating style was able to shift the group to much deeper levels of relationships and create bonds that have had a lasting impact on my life. I recommend the Community Building Workshop to anyone who is searching for authenticity in their lives and success in their organization or business.

– John Pehrson, Manager, DuPont, Wilmington, Delaware

My experience with these CB workshops is that they are unique, and transformative. I believe they hold the promise to heal and transform individuals and communities like nothing else that I have seen or experienced. I highly recommend them. Edward Groody’s expertise and wisdom as Community Building thought leader, teacher and trainer has been invaluable as Milwaukee becomes a hub for Community Building facilitation worldwide.

– Clarence Johnson, CEO, Wisconsin Community Services.

CB is an opportunity to learn what it means to be everything we are, as individuals, in the deepest part of ourselves AND at the same time to encourage and inform what it means to be a responsible member of various groups and communities to which we belong. It’s been invaluable. Edward Groody is a deeply gifted, trusted, and seasoned facilitator and leader in the art of Community Building.

 

– Kyle Lehning, Multiple Grammy Award Winning Record Producer

Community Building is the team building approach undertaken by the most effective organizations. Edward Groody’s CB approach offers a process and the tools and skills needed to effectively build trust and implement change.”

– William Q. Judge, Ph.D., Professor of Strategic Management, Old Dominion University (ODU), Visiting Professor Copenhagen Business School

Community Building is the team building approach undertaken by the most effective organizations. Edward Groody’s CB approach offers a process and the tools and skills needed to effectively build trust and implement change.”

 

– William Q. Judge, Ph.D., Professor of Strategic Management, Old Dominion University (ODU), Visiting Professor Copenhagen Business School

Mandatory trainings are usually not as interesting as other kinds of trainings. They can have a been there, done that feel. The training provided by Edward Groody definitely does not have that feeling. It is engaging and interactive, practical and it meets all the legal requirements. Ed is our go to, preferred trainer.

 

– Cara Stein, Co-Chief Operating Officer, William Morris Agency New York