Biography
Dr. Stewart-Pellegrini is the Managing Director of Business Solutions Consultants and has 33 years of business consulting specializing in change management, leadership development, strategic planning, inclusion initiatives, and executive coaching. She received her PhD with distinction from Boston College in Massachusetts and holds an MS degree in Adult Education from Indiana University. In 2020 she was awarded DePaul's QM Star Award for Excellence in online course design in the field of change management.
She has held faculty positions at the following institutions: Indiana University Northwest School of Business and Economics Graduate MBA Program, Boston University, Bates College, Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Elmhurst College Graduate Center for Business and Economics, and the UIC Department of Health Informatics Services. She has also held administrative positions at Harvard University Graduate School of Education. Her online teaching experience includes the design and facilitation of an online leadership program for the UIC Biomedical and Health Informatics Sciences Department and DePaul University SCPS.
Mary has a passion for community engagement. She serves on the Indiana Interfaith Action Network (IAN) Steering Committee, which helped secure $1.5 million from the Indiana American Rescue Plan for a mobile mental health program for Gary, IN, and $130 million to help communities across Indiana with mental health services to be allocated in 2024. She is now serving on AARP’s 2024 Indiana State Legislative Committee advocating for redefining and improving life for Hoosiers over the age of 50.
She is a forty-two-year Delta Sigma Theta Sorority member, the world's largest African American sorority. The foundation of her work is the belief that all employees work best in environments that honor and respect them as human beings and contributors to the health of the organization.
She is also a September 2001 World Trade Center survivor. She grew up in a southern Indiana farming community and currently lives in the Northwest with her husband. They have traveled to every US state, except Alaska. Mary is an accomplished pianist and public speaker, an avid student of the archaeology of religion and ritual, a committed professor to her students, and a lover of elephants.