Dr. Douglass Teschner is a proven, results-oriented leader, mentor, trainer, and coach who embraces challenge, integrates vision with a passion for excellence, and inspires a higher level of personal and professional performance. One of his greatest passions is developing leaders and building effective teams with high levels of transparency and quality communication.
Dr. Teschner has a depth of US and international experience in nonprofits, business, and state and federal governments. His domestic career includes:
14 years as development director for Riverbend Community Mental Health (including grant writing, fundraising, strategic planning, and public relations)
12 years (six terms) as an elected New Hampshire state legislator (including developing an innovative training program for elected officials)
2 years as a NH assistant secretary of state, supporting elections and designing and managing a statewide grant program for city and town clerks.
Dr. Teschner (right) with US Ambassador (center) John Tefft in Ukraine.
Internationally, Dr. Teschner served as a forestry Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco in the 1970s and rejoined Peace Corps in 2008 for nine years as a country director and expert consultant, working with more than 1500 Peace Corps Volunteers and 230 staff in Ukraine and five African nations. One staffer wrote:
‘‘ Other bosses give orders, you give directions, others give targets, you give vision, others lead by authority and you have always led by respect.”
Dr. Teschner serving as a forestry Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco in the 1970s.
Douglass Teschner with Peace Corps Volunteers in West Africa.
Dr. Teschner has collaborated with many international donors including CDC, PEPFAR, WFP, and WHO and led his staff in Guinea to implement an innovative community education project that reached 3 million people and helped end that country’s Ebola epidemic. You can read more at Beating Ebola. US Ambassador Dennis Hankins wrote:
"Dr. Teschner has been a wonderful director and made sure that Peace Corps local staff were able to make a key contribution in fighting Ebola. Through their collective efforts, I am convinced hundreds if not thousands of lives were saved.”
He was also chief of party of USAID legislative strengthening projects in Rwanda and Morocco, and speaks fluent French, Moroccan Arabic, and some Russian. He served as an OSCE election observer during the 2019 Ukraine Presidential election.
Dr. Teschner in California's Sierra Nevada mountains.
Dr. Teschner also has 6 years experience in outdoor education, including leading US programs for youth, as well as mountain guiding in Kenya, Switzerland, and Scotland.
Teschner earned degrees from the University of Massachusetts (B.S. forestry and Ed.D. in administrative leadership) and the University of Vermont (M.S botany).
A lifelong hiker, skier, and mountaineer, Doug has made numerous ascents in North America, Europe, and Africa and played the lead role in saving the life of a severely injured man on Mt. Washington, NH, an event that shaped his life in many ways.. He has published many of his adventures in the Appalachian Mountain Club journal Appalachia and volunteers as contributing editor. He also serves as a volunteer naturalist, giving talks in NH’s White Mountains.
Dr. Teschner has been married to his wife Martha, a nurse, for more than 40 years, and they have two sons: Ben, a geologist in Colorado, and Luke, a teacher in Vermont, as well as three grandchildren.
As a leadership consultant, trainer, and author of a regular New Hampshire Business Review leadership column and monthly leadership tips, Dr. Teschner supports continuous growth of current and future leaders, providing opportunities for people to learn skills to better their personal and professional lives, and supporting sustainable cultures of organizational leadership.
The Teschner family
He also volunteers with Braver Angels (braverangels.org), a national citizens movement that brings Americans together to bridge the partisan divide and strengthen our democratic republic. He organizes trainings for citizens, as well as elected officials and their staff. See, for example, Dr. Teschner’s closing remarks at training for NH legislators.