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Michelle D. Coussens owns Plan B Consulting. Services span strategic and business planning, project management, and operational excellence. In addition, she facilitates meetings and conducts market analysis and competitive intelligence for various types of organizations worldwide. She teaches courses for and has also served as a consultant to several community development organizations both within and outside the NeighborWorks network. She is on the faculty of the American Management Association where she teaches numerous strategic planning, management, and analytical seminars to business professionals around the world and is also on the business faculty at College of DuPage. She also facilitates webinars for Progressive Business Executive Education. She publishes a monthly newsletter, Planning Possibilities, which is distributed worldwide to over 4,000 clients and contacts.
While consulting, Michelle became the Dean of the School of Business at Kendall College. She built and managed all aspects of the School, including faculty and curriculum selection and assessment, as well as program development. Reporting to the Provost, Ms. Coussens oversaw and managed all aspects of the Business School, including faculty and curriculum selection and assessment, as well as program development and enhancement. Under her direction, the program grew from just 13 students to 200 students within the first two years, generating professionally savvy, globally-driven, and services-oriented graduates who have been hired by such companies as Accenture or who have successfully started their own companies. Michelle then went on to complete an engagement as Marketing Director at Capsim Management Simulations, Inc., where, reporting to the president, she initiated marketing and sales strategies and processes, resulting in hundreds of leads and numerous six-figure corporate client requests for proposals.
During her employment at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Michelle also taught at DePaul University as an adjunct instructor. Earlier, she spent 15 years working at CNA Financial, working in personal, commercial, and professional liability lines of business. During her career, she has performed technical roles, run operations, developed new products, and published applied research. Michelle holds particular personal interest in assisting not-for-profit organizations. Her work in this area originally began through her applied research focused on community development, most specifically related to financial literacy initiatives. She has published related papers in Federal Reserve publications, as well as in the American Council on Consumer Interests Annual.
Michelle has served and assisted several organizations in a voluntary capacity. In 2012, she was appointed by Northwestern University President Morton Shapiro to the prestigious Northwestern Council of One Hundred, serving as a mentor and role model to female students and alumni, co-leading development of the Council’s current strategic plan, and currently serves as operations lead on its executive committee. In January 2012, she also became the founding chair of the Illinois Diversity Council Board of Directors. She also became a founding advisory board member for Guidestar.org in 2013. She has also been a member of Chicago Step Up Women’s Network and of the Chicago Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM).
Ms. Coussens holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from Northwestern University and a Masters in Business Administration, with a concentration in Marketing, from DePaul University. She also has achieved several professional insurance designations—Associate in Risk Management (ARM), Chartered Property/Casualty Underwriter (CPCU), and Registered Professional Liability Underwriter (RPLU) and has completed actuarial exams in Calculus, Statistics, Operations Research, and Economics. She also holds an Illinois life/health insurance license.
