About Marie Sonnet

Marie earned her doctorate in human and organizational systems from Fielding Graduate University’s School of Leadership Studies. Interested in why some organizations better respond to planned and unplanned change, she studied employee behaviors present when an organization demonstrates collective resilience.

Those behaviors can be deliberately fostered and encouraged by organizations or they can be unknowingly deterred. One proactive organizational strategy is to encourage situational leadership by those without formal title or authority.

In a recent research project, Marie partnered with colleague, Dr. Reid Spearman, to study such leadership in a graduate university setting during COVID-19. They found that doctoral students who created their own support network developed a circular model of leading that allowed students to experience belonging in a virtual environment, to share emotions, to get specific and practical advice, and to finish their projects.

Using Nussbaum’s (2011) capabilities framework, Sonnet and Spearman concluded that as student capabilities increased, so did social justice.

You can read their full study in Chapter 1 of Driving Social Innovation: How Unexpected Leadership is Transforming Society.

Throughout the research and writing process, Marie found her love of editing and writing coaching.

These passions leverage her expertise as a teacher and quality improvement consultant and her affinity for structures, formulas, and rules that follow teaching mathematics and working with Six Sigma practices. Marie has worked with authors and editors to write for and edit two monographs for the Fielding University Press, Resilience: Navigating Challenges of Modern Life (2019) and Driving Social Innovation: How Unexpected Leadership is Transforming Society (2022).