Iris Lee Bagwell

Iris Lee Bagwell, M.Ed., is an executive coach and organizational consultant in Winthrop, Massachusetts. She is the Founder and Principal at Optio Associates LLC, a consulting firm offering leadership development to a wide variety of clients in corporate, nonprofit and political settings.  Iris has over forty years of experience working with individuals, pairs, teams and organizations with a focus on building relationships that work. This relationship-based conceptual model is based on the work of outstanding thought leaders like Diana Smith, Chris Argyris, and David Kantor.

Through Optio Associates, Iris offers coaching, consultation, training, and facilitation.  Her work draws deeply on over two decades focused on developing leaders in business settings enhanced by her past experience as a psychotherapist.  Clients routinely report that working with Iris enables them to see new options that can lead to meaningful, lasting change. Her corporate clients can be found in high tech, professional services, finance, academia, and healthcare settings. Her non-corporate clients are primarily progressive political campaigns and other political organizations with an emphasis on entrepreneurial leadership.

Starting in 2007, Iris became increasingly involved in the political process. Optio Associates now provides customized services for leaders and leadership teams of political campaigns and organizations. This political work pairs Iris’s experience as a leadership development coach with her campaign volunteer experience to create vibrant, powerful interventions that can reduce staff turnover, accelerate leadership development, and enhance the pace and quality of decision-making. These offerings include convening a high impact volunteer coaching program that matches volunteer coaches with key leadership staff in various political organizations, as well as smaller programs that focus on leadership team initiatives. Iris has worked with the 2010 Deval Patrick gubernatorial campaign, the Obama 2012 campaign, and other campaigns or political organizations.

Iris holds a Bachelors Degree cum laude from Tufts University and a Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology from Northeastern University in addition to extensive post-graduate training.  Iris is a frequent trainer in the field of organizational learning, including serving as Senior Faculty at the Action Design Institute.