Leslie Pratch is the founder of Pratch & Company. She advises private equity investors, corporate directors, and senior executives of both public and privately-held companies to determine whether the individuals being considered for a firm’s most important strategic and operational responsibilities possess the psychological resources and personality strengths needed to be successful. Her methodology is based on psychological assessments of over 200 senior executives performed on behalf of clients of Pratch & Company over the past 10 years.

The genesis of her approach was a study she undertook at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago from 1991-1994 to determine how to predict which high-achieving M.B.A. students in an elite program for developing business leaders would emerge as the most effective executives. She discovered that assessing an individual’s coping style provided a more powerful predictor of leadership among already highly-qualified candidates than any other tool in use in Corporate America. This finding was the basis of her doctoral dissertation.

She received her B.A. in religion with honors from Williams College (1984); an M.A. in human development from the University of Chicago (1988); an M.B.A. in strategy and finance from the University of Chicago (2000); and an M.A. (1993) and Ph.D. (1995) in clinical psychology from the Northwestern University Medical School.