Most organizations face high turnover and communication breakdowns not because their people lack motivation, but because their teams are actively over-functioning to broken trust conditions. Michelle Courtney Berry’s work is grounded in a simple but powerful premise: before organizations can heal, leaders must diagnose what is actually happening—and prescribe responses equal to the problem.

Michelle Courtney Berry’s framework sits at the rare intersection of doctoral-level leadership scholarship and cross-sector executive execution. “By treating employee disengagement as critical system metrics rather than disciplinary triggers, I help institutions move past performative wellness trends and implement structural accountability” - Michelle Courtney Berry, The Workplace Doc™, Founder of Courtney Consulting Enterprises, LLC., creator of the Working Well, one day at a time® method.

Bestselling Author of Keeping Calm in Chaos

As the author of the bestselling book, Keeping Calm in Chaos: How to Work Well, Live Well, and Love Abundantly No Matter What, Michelle’s insights, fundraising, and spokesperson work have been featured across more than 200 global media outlets, including PBS, TEDx, O-Magazine, Good Morning America, and SXSW. Named a Top 20 Most Empowering Woman in America by Womenpreneur Magazine, she has delivered over 5,000 presentations across four continents, sharing stages and opening for elite global figures including Maya Angelou and the Dalai Lama.

Original Leadership Research and Empirical Data

Michelle’s executive advisory frameworks are anchored in rigorous, multi-stream empirical scholarship examining the intersection of organizational behavior, systemic culture, and leadership accountability.

The Doctoral Dissertation (Acute Care Nursing in the U.S. Focus)

• The Focus: Quantitative, cross-sectional, correlational design using Hayes’ PROCESS Model 1 examined perceived servant leadership in nursing supervision, toxic workplace environments, and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) among U.S. acute care nurses.

  The Killer Finding: A supportive immediate supervisor does not automatically buffer a toxic system; instead, high servant leadership makes macro-organizational toxicity more visible and psychologically salient by sharp contrast. Good supervisors matter, but they cannot repair a systemically toxic organization alone.

  The N-186 National Study (General Workplace Focus)

  The Focus: National mixed-methods survey of 186 U.S. workers across multiple industries. Started while Michelle was at Le Moyne College studying Executive Leadership at the doctoral level and completed independently before transferring to LSU Shreveport to complete her doctorate in Leadership Studies.

  The Killer Finding: Re-validates "quiet quitting" as deliberate employee self-preservation and emotional coping strategies driven by structural toxic conditions (79% experiencing mental health harm), rather than character or motivation flaws.

• International Recognition: Michelle’s original research and frameworks regarding toxic workplace environments have been accepted twice for presentation by the International Leadership Association (ILA) Global Conference.

Enterprise Trust Metrics

• The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission: "Delivered a high-impact presentation that our leadership team was actively debriefing and utilizing long after the session ended."

• Virgin Pulse Thrive Summit: Featured mainstage expert framing behavioral insights for several hundred national human resource and benefit executives, talent officers, senior leaders, and celebrities.

• SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management): Trusted advisor and facilitator for senior HR councils navigating enterprise culture turnarounds and risk mitigation.