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Peter Sherer is the Founder and CEO of Experience Matters. He is a strategic consultant and executive coach, with extensive experience increasing the effectiveness of both organizations and senior executives.

Peter serves as a Principal of the Council for Excellence in Government, a member of the Senior Executive Association and the International Coaching Federation. Selected recent presentations include the Smithsonian Associates, the Council for Excellence in Government, the Performance Institute, the Department of Education, The Central Intelligence Agency senior staff, and The American Society for Training and Development.

Over the last two years, he has coached over 350 public and private sector executives in career transition, performance improvement, and organizational restructuring. He is a member the International Coaching Federation, a coach for The Federal Consulting Group and a graduate of Coach University.

In his federal government service, Peter was the Deputy Director of the President’s Commission on Executive Exchange. The Exchange program was a White House initiative to broaden the understanding of senior executives in both the private and public sectors by exchanging them with their counterparts in one-year assignments. Under Peter’s leadership, the program grew significantly in both size and recognition.

At the Department of Health and Human Services, he served as the project manager for the implementation of The Civil Service Reform Act. The radically new and demanding statute was designed to tie employee pay to performance. He oversaw the development of policies covering over 150,000 employees, including the founding members of the Senior Executive Service. The Department was the first in the federal government to implement all of the provisions of the new law successfully.

In addition to his government experience, he has a first-hand understanding of organizational start-ups, institutional development, strategic planning, Board recruitment and training, communications, and fundraising. In his early career as a divinity student at Harvard University in the late 1960s, Peter founded Project Place, the first house to serve runaway children on the east coast. In just its second year, he raised over $1 million for Project Place and attracted an outstanding staff of 50 professionals and a 200-member volunteer corps. Over the last 35 years, Project Place has returned hundreds of children to their homes and shaped major changes in the social service strategy for young people in Boston. Project Place today has expanded its mission to include assisting adults on welfare in finding meaningful employment.

Peter also has extensive experience as a senior executive in outstanding national non-profit organizations including a Ford Foundation initiative, the National AIDS Fund. At the National AIDS Fund, he was responsible for raising a total of $25 million as the first Director of Development and Communications. During Peter’s tenure, the Fund grew from serving eight cities to 37 cities with over 3,000 grants. While there, he recruited a national Board of Directors that included CEOs of Fortune 100 companies, international celebrities, and senior national foundation leaders.

He has also developed fundraising strategies that raised significant additional revenue for the Harvard Business School, the Combined Federal Campaign, Washington National Cathedral, and the Make-A-Wish Foundation of America. His most recent non-profit assignment was as the first national Director of Development and Strategic Partnerships for Experience Corps, an organization founded with the express purpose of engaging retiring baby boomers in community service.

His international experience has emphasized strategy development, revenue diversification, and public-private partnerships. Peter was asked by the Canadian government to serve on a national task force of international experts to contribute to the Canadian national AIDS strategy. He also worked with the World Bank and the African Development Bank on a partnership to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS. Other international consulting has included assignments with PACT, an international development group, and the Academy for Educational Development.

He graduated from Lake Forest College and was awarded a Rockefeller fellowship to the Harvard Divinity School. He later received an MBA from the Harvard Business School with second year honors.