THe Sixth Level Collaborative
About Us
We’re psychologists, executives, facilitators, and educators who’ve experienced the very challenges we now help solve. The Sixth Level wasn’t born in a boardroom — it was built in real workplaces, through real work, with real people.
Overview
The Team Behind the Transformation.
The Sixth Level exists to elevate leadership beyond performance metrics and into purpose, connection, and sustainable results. We help leaders and teams step into their full potential — through culture, collaboration, and evidence-based human dynamics.
This is about transforming not just how people work, but how they relate, lead, and thrive.
Our Story
From Theory to Practice
The Sixth Level emerged through years of collaboration, research, and real-world experience.
Created by a psychologist, a sociologist, a practitioner-scholar of management, and a business executive, the model was born from a shared realization: traditional leadership frameworks weren’t working. They often overlooked what truly drives people — connection, equity, and shared purpose.
We studied leaders who were doing things differently — many of them women — and quietly creating cultures of trust, innovation, and belonging. Their stories, along with our own, shaped a model grounded in Self-in-Relation: a leadership approach rooted in mutual responsibility, purpose, and relational intelligence.
The Sixth Level isn’t just a framework. It’s a reflection of what’s possible when we lead with humanity.
Meet The Authors
Stacy Feiner, MS/PsyD
High Performance Psychologist, Entrepreneur, Investor and Author
Bio
Dr. Stacy Feiner is an accomplished psychologist, entrepreneur, investor, and mother. She champions the aspirations and ambitions of family-businesses with a pro-growth, pro-health approach that untangles conflict, strengthens emotional dynamics, and facilitates growth. Dr. Feiner founded her firm in 2018 to support the unique needs of private enterprise and ensure they thrive. Committed to optimal results, she collaborates with experts from various disciplines to execute unconventional solutions.
Curious about people’s lives, Dr. Feiner lived in 8 US cities, traveled 9 countries, and lived in Japan. Trained as a Doctor of Psychology (PsyD), Dr. Feiner worked in college counseling as a psychotherapist and in corporate settings as a performance coach: Vassar College, Merrill Lynch (licensed 7&63), Key Bank, and BDO USA. In 2015, Dr. Feiner published her first book, Talent Mindset. While in high school, she attended the Stone Center lectures at Wellesley College to study Self-in-Relation Theory with Dr. Jean Baker Miller.
Kathy Overbeke, DM/DBA
Family Business Consultant, Entrepreneur, Researcher, Author
Bio
Dr. Kathy K. Overbeke draws on her experience as an entrepreneur and practitioner-scholar to help individuals and businesses discover strengths to conceive new possibilities and reach desired outcomes. She is a family business advisor and executive coach that works with Fortune 500, middle market, and small businesses. When working with family businesses, Dr. Overbeke aims to keep the entrepreneurial fire alive while maintaining family harmony. She is informed by empirical research when helping family businesses plan for the future and when helping to develop leaders.
Dr. Overbeke has published original research in academic journals and has presented her research internationally. She has also published in popular journals such as Psychology Today. She was an entrepreneur for over 25 years before returning to school to earn her Doctorate in Management. Subsequently, she founded GPS: Generation Planning Strategies, LLC, joined the Executive Coaching staff at Case Western Reserve University.
Jack Harris, MA/Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY, Owner and Principal Consultant, Harris Consulting Associates, LLC.
Bio
Jack Harris brings more than 45 years of successful experience in higher education, and management and consulting positions with government and business. Jack has served as a Professor of Sociology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges (HWS) since 1974. Dr. Harris was twice President of the New York State Sociological Association. Dr. Harris directed the Men’s Studies Minor at HWS, the first-degree program in Men’s Studies in the United States. He teaches courses on Men and Masculinity, the Sociology of Business and Management, the Sociology of Community, and Senior Seminar Research Practicum. As a professional applied sociologist with specializations in gender, community development, and social organization, he consults nation-wide local governments about business process reengineering and project and change management.
Dr. Harris has published on Vietnamese masculinity and gender relations including co-authoring a book chapter in the Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Vietnam (2022) on “The Affairs of Men: Masculinity in Contemporary Vietnam,” the article “Extramarital Relationships, Masculinity, and Gender Relations in Vietnam,” Southeast Review of Asian Studies, Volume 31 (2009), and “Incorporating Men into Vietnamese Gender Studies,” Vietnam Social Sciences, (1998). He has presented at numerous national and international conferences on gender relations. In addition, on the business side, he is co-author of The Municipal Computer Systems Handbook. He has assisted in organizational analysis and design, leadership and management training and staff development, employee motivation, group dynamics and team building, conflict management and resolution, and the analysis of workplace culture.
Rachel Wallis Andreasson, MBA
Executive, Writer, Collaborator
Bio
Rachel Wallis Andreasson believes the right people come into your life at the right time for a specific purpose. Rachel has a passion for supporting women and helping them build their network. She joined her family business during its first major acquisition and then built infrastructure, people and family governance systems for the next twenty-four years. She was the first woman to become President of the Missouri State Association for the convenience store industry and she was awarded the Leadership Award by her peers while earning her MBA at Washington University. After serving in various leadership positions in her family business, Rachel became the CEO, overseeing 1,100 team members. Today, she remains a shareholder and Board member of the family business and is the Executive Director of the Reform synagogue where she grew up and is a proud mother of three. Rachel serves on a bank board, is a mentor and was a founding member of a community foundation where she continues to oversee a learning center that serves 100 children in rural Missouri. Rachel is a self-starter on initiatives that bring value to an organization and thrives on moving people and organizations forward in a purposeful way.
What is the Sixth Level?
Sixth Level leadership qualities have been ignored for far too long.
The Sixth Level advances leadership for all leaders. The Sixth Level model is derived from the narratives of 16 women leaders as seen through the lens of Self-in-Relation theory, which defines the psychology of women as oriented to connection and care. This model supersedes Maslow’s fifth level, self-actualization, which is based on men’s psychology and is consequently incomplete.
The Sixth Level model features four core differentiators, qualities that distinguish women’s leadership. These differentiators—mutuality, ingenuity, justness, and intrinsic motivation—redesign leadership. The differentiators promote a collective interest to create healthy social dynamics that, in turn, optimize business results. Women are naturally oriented to exhibit these differentiators, but they can be learned, just as dominance has been learned by women.
The four core differentiators expand the notion of leadership by highlighting qualities in women, long misinterpreted as weak, as essential strong leadership qualities. Finally, the command-and-control model can be left behind. Dominance will no longer be confused with leadership. For the first time, essential aspects of women’s social psychology are defined, reshaping a shared reality that improves the quality of human interaction and improves profitability and sustainability in business.
