Deborah Natoli, Ph.D. is Professor (Teaching) at the USC Price School of Public Policy. She teaches Human Behavior in Public and Non-‐profit Organizations, Applied Research Methods, and the Doctoral Capstone.
Deborah worked for ten years as a public high school social studies teacher with special assignment to support the success of students from underprivileged communities. She later founded the Center for Excellence in Teaching at Saint Louis University and her research on teacher personal and professional growth gained her opportunity for post-‐doc study with Robert Kegan at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Dr. Natoli came to USC in 2006 as Director of Faculty Development at the Marshall School of Business where she was honored with the Dean’s Award in 2007 for enhancing the quality of instruction and raising student ratings of teaching scores. Warren Bennis inspired Deborah to reframe her model for teacher development to more broadly conceptualize a theory for leadership development. She began conducting autobiographical interviews with people from all walks of life – teachers and professors, medical researchers, artists, scientists, actors, politicians, business leaders of profit and non-profit organizations, even Dr. Maya Angelou – and through collecting personal stories and lived realities of study participants, Deborah envisioned a theory and framework for leadership grounded in psychodynamic, depth psychology, and neuroscience principles.
Professor Natoli has offered presentations from Madrid to Brazil, consults with organizations like Tacori, contributes to the Huffington Post, and is working on a book, How Leaders Think. Deborah serves on the Board of Directors for the Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics at the USC Gould School of Law and is a faculty fellow for the Sol Price Center for Social Innovation and the Bedrosian Center on Governance and the Public Enterprise. She is a member of Mindful USC and USC MindfulnessScience Steering Committees and was elected to serve on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles 2018 – 2019.
