About

About Gardner & Co.

Applied research, real-world insights, pragmatic solutions, measurable impact.

We help our clients across professional services, industry, government, and non-profits to drive change through smarter collaboration.

Combining our unique blend of empirical research, academic rigor, and top-tier consulting experience, we partner with the board, C-suite and leadership teams to help transform organizations.

We are passionate about collaboration because it creates opportunities for every employee to thrive when they contribute with their full potential.

Gardner & Co. is led by Dr. Heidi K. Gardner (Harvard Fellow, best-selling author, sought-after advisor) and supported with a world-class team. Gardner & Co. also draws on its network of top-tier experts for both research and advisory work. We not only deliver smart collaboration, we live it.

Geography and Industries

Gardner & Co. supports clients across the globe, as well as industries – including:

  • Professional services (law, accounting, consulting, engineering, PR)
  • Financial services (investment banks, asset managers, insurance companies)
  • Corporates (biotech/pharma, healthcare systems, publishing, retail, real estate)
  • Non-profits and governments

Levels and Functions

  • Boards of directors
  • Executive teams and senior management
  • In-house legal teams
  • Business owners/franchisees

We have worked on all six inhabited continents, and partner with very select local providers for longer-term engagements.

Dr. Heidi K. Gardner

Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Heidi K. Gardner is a sought-after advisor, keynote speaker, and facilitator for organizations across a wide range of industries globally. Named by Thinkers50 as a Next Generation Business Guru and one of the world’s foremost leadership experts, she is a distinguished fellow at Harvard Law School and former professor at Harvard Business School. She is currently the faculty chair and instructor in multiple executive education programs at both institutions.

With her Gardner & Co. team, Dr. Gardner partners with boards, executive teams, and other senior leaders to boost performance by embedding the practices of smarter, cross-silo collaboration within those groups and across the broader organization and ecosystem. This results in concrete, quantifiable performance improvements.

Altogether, Dr. Gardner has authored (or co-authored) more than 100 books, chapters, case studies, and articles. This includes best-selling Smart Collaboration: How Professionals and Their Firms Succeed by Breaking Down Silos and Smarter Collaboration: A New Approach to Breaking Down Barriers and Transforming Work. Her research has received the Academy of Management’s prize for Outstanding Practical Implications for Management and has been selected multiple times for Harvard Business Review’s “best of” collections. It has also been featured in major media outlets around the globe.

Dr. Gardner has lived and worked on four continents, including as a Fulbright fellow, and for McKinsey & Co. and Procter & Gamble. She earned her BA in Japanese studies from the University of Pennsylvania (Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude), a master’s degree from the London School of Economics, and a second master’s and Ph.D. from London Business School.

Dr. Heidi K. Gardner

Ivan Matviak

Co-Founder

Ivan Matviak has extensive experience transforming and accelerating the growth of complex global businesses through disciplined strategy, product innovation, operations optimization, and cross-silo collaboration.

Currently, Matviak is the CEO of Smarter Collaboration International, a technology company focused on delivering tools to enhance organizational collaboration. He also co-founded Gardner & Co. Matviak is the co-author of the best-selling book Smarter Collaboration: A New Approach to Breaking Down Barriers and Transforming Work (2022) and multiple articles in journals like Harvard Business Review and the Wharton Magazine.

Previously he was an executive vice president at Clearwater Analytics, a publicly traded fintech company, and served as a senior advisor to Boston Consulting Group and the private equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC. Matviak was an executive vice president at State Street Bank, serving as chairman and president of multiple fintech subsidiaries and head of Americas for the bank’s data and analytics business.

Matviak has lived and worked around the world including Edinburgh, Johannesburg, London, New York, and Paris with the Bank of Scotland, Bain & Company, Walt Disney Company, and Procter & Gamble. 

Matviak holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MBA and master’s degree in international affairs from the Wharton Business School, and is a fellow at the Joseph H. Lauder Institute for International Studies.

Matviak can be reached at ivan@gardnerandco.co.

Ivan Matviak

Lea Haggerty

Executive Assistant to Both CEOs

Lea Haggerty is the executive assistant to both CEOs. With over 27 years of experience in preeminent professional services including venture capital, executive search, higher education, management consulting, and financial services, she brings a wealth of administrative knowledge to Gardner & Co.

Haggerty handles everyday logistics, provides research support, and is instrumental in planning conferences, events, and book tours.

Haggerty can be reached at leahaggerty@gardnerandco.co.

Lea Haggerty