About Us

Pondera is a leadership consulting practice located in Grand Rapids, MI, founded in 2006 by Joe Day, Rob Elliott, and John Belaski. Joe Day often notes that when we are living and working in a healthy, constructive, and ethical way, we are “on the path”. The three of us first crossed paths when we met at a business conference sponsored by a local university. We had lunch that day and found common ground in terms of our values and goals in life for starting a business that evolved into Pondera. Our chosen name speaks to our values since it is the Latin word for balance. 

Learning to live with those dynamics moved us in a direction that enabled us to provide a balanced set of services to our clients; developing within ourselves and with our clients the courage to face the complexities of interpersonal relationships in a non-threatening way. In order to help our clients achieve balance, we developed a tool that was originally used with professional and college sports teams, in order to help coaches and players to better understand and value each others’ operating styles. However, the use of the tool quickly spread beyond the sports world to the worlds of business and youth development. The subsequent evolution and development of our consulting practice is making a positive difference for a broad band of organizations and individuals in both the public and private domains.