About Merced Group
Merced Group provides change management, communications and workplace advisory services to businesses and organizations. We help companies and organizations through organizational, business process or technology change by providing a full set of change management capabilities, and support for leadership and team productivity and engagement as they adapt to remote, in-office or hybrid models.
Whether for extensive business process transitions, digital transformation initiative or groups who are adapting to technology use and effective teaming in a changing workplace modalities, our change management and communications services include:
•Change strategy development, impact analysis, risk assessments, program design, leadership and stakeholder engagement, and communications, training programs, metrics and reporting,
• Designing communication and training programs that leverage collaboration and digital technologies to accelerate and amplify change management programs across an organization,
• Expert communications strategies and plans, executive and employee communications, content development, (newsletters, web, copy social media, blog, tools, videos).
Merced Group is named for the Merced River in California, which flows through Yosemite Valley.
Catherine Shinners
Catherine Shinners is principal and founder of Merced Group. She has been providing change management and communications services to organizations since 2008. Her work is grounded in earlier business career experience having held senior director positions in product management and business development at leading technology companies in Silicon Valley. She developed new products and lines of business in the enterprise software market particularly for the financial services and telecommunications industries.
Certifications
- Prosci change management
- Foresight Essentials – Institute for the Future
- Artificial Intelligence and Business Strategy – MIT/Sloan School of Management
Associations
- NorCal Association of Change Management Professionals
- Bay Area Organizational Design Network (Bay Area ODN)
- Women in Consulting
- Conversational Leadership Network
Learning Networks
Catherine connects to experts around the world via participation in national and international knowledge management, change management and business leadership communities. Catherine speaks at conferences and has blogged since 2006.
She was an adjunct faculty member of Columbia University’s Information and Knowledge Strategy Master’s program in the School of Professional Studies from 2014-2018. She was also a member of a learning and practitioner network of global professionals, Change Agents Worldwide from 2013-2018. She contributed a chapter to Smarter Innovation: Using Interactive Processes to Drive Better Business Results with Change Agent colleagues. (Published by the Ark Group in June 2014).
Catherine is also a member of the Long Now Foundation and does pro-bono communications support for SecureTheFuture2100.org, a group of retired NASA scientists who research and make policy recommendations on issues of climate change.