Resume and CV

For over 25 years, Dr. Theresa Ricke-Kiely has been teaching, training and consulting nonprofit leaders. She especially enjoys leadership consulting at the middle management, executive, and board levels, focusing on transformational and servant leadership within organizations serving missions of peace and social justice. When applicable, she incorporates mindfulness into her coaching and consulting practices to help create even more effective leaders and organizations.

Long before Dr. Ricke-Kiely was a coach and consultant, she began her career as an entry-level employee working for a nonprofit serving people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. From there she grew into the director of one of the largest residential programs in upstate NY, where she helped serve hundreds of individuals and their families. 

Marist College, one of Dr. Ricke-Kiely’s alma maters, took notice of her success and invited her to come and teach. It was there she began her academic career. Following her time at Marist, she went on to create the inaugural Center for Nonprofit Leadership at the University of South Carolina (Upstate), then taught in the Master of Nonprofit Administration program at the University of Notre Dame. While at Notre Dame, she also led the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies as executive director. Currently, Dr. Ricke-Kiely is a part of the clinical faculty at the University of Arizona where she teaches leaders in the nonprofit and public administration sectors. 

In addition to being a nonprofit leader and academic, Dr. Ricke-Kiely is a published author, public speaker and peer reviewer. Her book, Mindful Nonprofit Leadership, is available here. She also speaks regularly at conferences, has published numerous articles on nonprofit leadership in a wide variety of national and international journals, and has been a longtime member of various professional communities, including: the Association for Research on Nonprofit and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR), the International Leadership Association (ILA) and the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education (ACMHE). 

Dr. Ricke-Kiely earned a BA in Psychology from SUNY New Paltz, an MPA in Human Services from Marist College, and an Ed.D. in Organizational Leadership from the University of Sarasota.

She lives in Tucson, Arizona with her husband David and her cat, Kitty Blue.