Thea Spitzer:

Guiding organizations and individuals through meaningful change

Consulting  & Coaching Services

When change must work—not just look good, many call Thea 


With 30+ years’ experience as a trusted consultant, advisor, and coach in large organizations, Thea aligns direction and execution, navigates complex change, and helps companies build sustainable, resilient futures while achieving real results today. 


She also guides and supports individuals to identify and enter their next chapter with clarity, purpose, and passion.

Sometimes change is viewed as inspiring. Other times it’s seen as a threat. How do you and others you know tend to view it?

Services Thea Offers to Help Organizations Thrive 


Guiding Organizations in Making Critically-Needed Changes Effectively 

Independent firms like McKinsey and others report that only about 30% of large-scale changes attempted in organizations actually succeed. The other 70% face persistent challenges. Thea is a change-expert and can guide your firm to be among the 30% who effectively navigate change, by bringing clarity to ambiguity, aligning people around a shared purpose, and turning insight into practical action that delivers lasting impact.


Coaching and facilitating Individuals at Crossroads

Change may sound simple on paper, but in real life it’s messy, emotional, and often uncomfortable. We aren’t taught how to make changes in our lives, even ones that benefit us. Fortunately, there are things that make change possible, safe, worthwhile, and exciting. Especially when reinforced by a knowledgeable and supportive coach like Thea. She helps clarify what truly matters, uncover passions and strengths, and turn uncertainty into a confident, actionable path toward your next chapter.


Building Leadership Excellence

Companies need leaders with the right values and competencies. People who inspire and lead others superbly, and know when and how to challenge themselves and others to go in new directions. This is a lot to ask. Leaders need opportunities to expand their perspectives and skill sets. Thea has helped so many leaders over the last 30+ years, and would be honored to assist.


Launching and Sustaining Effective Collaboration

People can no longer afford to work in silos. Yet, they can’t do everything together. They need targeted collaboration that furthers business goals and builds the best products and services. We aren’t born with these skills. We need assistance to learn them from folks who have an expertise in collaboration. Thea has that expertise. 

Services Thea Offers to Help Individuals Thrive 


Coaching and facilitating Individuals at Crossroads

Change may sound simple on paper, but in real life it’s messy, emotional, and often uncomfortable. We aren’t taught how to make changes in our lives, even ones that benefit us. Fortunately, there are things that make change possible, safe, worthwhile, and exciting. Especially when reinforced by a knowledgeable and supportive coach like Thea. She helps clarify what truly matters, uncover passions and strengths, and turn uncertainty into a confident, actionable path toward your next chapter.


Finding and Evolving Your "North Star" and Inspiring You to Achieve It

Having a solid direction means that you have a “North Star”. It enables you to make excellent decisions and take the right actions to help reach goals. Most agree that this is essential. And yet many lack that North Star. Could you use assistance in discovering it? Critical Change can help.

What Clients Say About Thea’s Work

“It’s fair to say you have worked some magic here.”

Senior VP at Microsoft commenting on Thea's work improving collaboration between two important business groups that needed to work closely and had been unable to do so for several years.

“Thea understands the culture needed for large corporations to succeed in today’s global market and knows how to create that culture.”

GM at a Fortune 500 Company

“Thea has become our expert on cross-group issues.”

Organizational Consultant at Microsoft

“We found Thea to be very professional, very knowledgeable, and very committed to meeting her customers’ needs. She exceeded our expectations in all the work she performed for us. Her willingness to coach others and to share her knowledge and skills is unique and a real strength.”

VP at an International Fortune 500 Company

“It’s fair to say you have worked some magic here.”

Senior VP at Microsoft commenting on Thea's work improving collaboration between two important business groups that needed to work closely and had been unable to do so for several years.

“Thea understands the culture needed for large corporations to succeed in today’s global market and knows how to create that culture.”

GM at a Fortune 500 Company

About Dr. Spitzer

Thea Spitzer, Principal of Critical Change LLC, has been a consultant, strategic advisor, and coach to executives, leaders, teams and staff at organizations for 30+ years (16 years with Microsoft); as well as guiding individuals through change. 


Her expertise includes fine-tuning business direction, aligning staff with that direction, implementing complex changes successfully, increasing employee productivity and achieving bottom-line results.  She is well-seasoned in identifying and solving a wide range of tough challenges. Thea has designed and executed over 1,000 solutions in partnership with clients; sharing practical tools that help guide firms and individuals to new levels of success.   


She helps people do things in ways that make the most sense for today and tomorrow, identifying practices that worked in the past but are no longer effective. Thea excels at figuring out what’s really going on and solving root causes rather than symptoms. She works well with people, creating trust and safety that encourages openness and honesty. She does this with speed and quality, consistently exceeding client expectations. 


Thea founded Critical Change in 2004, and has been providing services to a variety of companies and individuals since that time. Prior to Critical Change, she was an internal management consultant at Microsoft; and before that, with GTE. Before GTE, she provided management services to a wide variety of firms. Early in her career, Thea held a leadership position with the American Red Cross. 


Thea has worked in a variety of industries and has specialties in technology and health care. She has expertise in helping organizations increase their sustainability and resilience in the face of disasters. And guides individuals transitioning to a new chapter of their life, helping them discover and pursue their passions. 


In addition to her consulting work, she also creates and delivers trainings, workshops and inspiring talks; and has received many accolades and awards for her work. Thea earned her Ph.D. in Organizational Systems from Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, her M.S. in Community Health from University of Cincinnati, and her A.B. from the University of Michigan. Leveraging her longstanding expertise in collaboration and discussions with Silicon Valley leaders, Dr. Spitzer offers a highly effective and practical approach for creating a collaborative culture in her book The Power of Collaboration, (Weiser, December 2017). 

A Few Examples of Demonstrated Results 

Thea has Achieved for Clients

Project #1 Business Strategy & Product Innovation

Challenging Situation: A product offered by this company had been highly successful. But recent advances by competitors was decreasing its profitability. Leaders knew they needed to make changes but weren’t sure how.

Actions Taken: After becoming familiar with the product and division, Thea designed and facilitated a process that engaged the creativity and knowledge of key employees to reinvent the product.

Results: The process was highly successful. Employees were motivated to contribute. Working with Thea, they created an innovation that took the product in very different directions and made it highly profitable again.


Project #2 Decision-Making Processes and Ownership

Challenging Situation: In partnering with the leadership of a division with 15,000 employees, Thea discovered that people didn’t understand who had authority to make what decisions. This decreased their effectiveness and often resulted in missed opportunities and mistrust.

Actions Taken: Thea determined the root causes of this issue. She then constructed a practical and easy-to-use decision-making process that fit the culture and alleviated the issues. It was met with huge enthusiasm and started being used regularly. 

Results: A six-month follow-up revealed positive results; the new process was working really well. With feedback from this check-in, Thea made a few tweaks that made it even better. Four years later, these decision processes were not only meeting the needs of that division, it had spread across the corporation.


Project #3 Cross-Group Collaboration

Challenging Situation: Two groups in this organization had complex interdependencies requiring joint brainstorming and decision-making, and coordinated actions for the development of an important product. There had been problems between the groups for several years. Delivery dates were missed and customer relationships were affected. Resources were wasted because the groups duplicated work, engaged in finger-pointing, and were no closer to having the needed product. 

Actions Taken: Thea put together an accurate picture of the situation. Using this information, she facilitated several streams of work to improve the way people worked, both individually and with others. 

Results: Immediate positive results were seen in the way the two groups collaborated. The most significant proof of success was the creation of a fantastic new product by these two groups working together.


Project #4 Leadership Coaching for Higher Performance

Challenging Situation: An important leader had strong skills in many aspects of her job, but was unable to influence others in positive ways. She had been made aware of the problem and had taken training to improve her skills but wasn’t changing her behaviors.

Actions Taken: Individual coaching was needed to assist this leader. Over the course of several months, Thea met with her regularly, providing coaching, challenges, and support.

Results: The leader gained deep insights and was able to change her beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. Over time she became known as “a key influencer” and got the respect of those that she had previously alienated. She contributed more to the organization’s success and was rewarded with a well-deserved promotion.