Team
Priya Pinto, PhD.
Partner
Maxwell Leadership Certified
Priya has a life-long fascination with people and what they need in order to thrive. She started her career in human services as a vocational evaluator, but that opportunity opened the door to several others, resulting in a broad-based experience that included case management, assisting clients with setting and achieving personal and vocational goals, offering support and resources to help obtain and retain employment in the community, and behavioral assessment along with positive, proactive behavior support and management. Priya’s area of specialty is a broad understanding of behavior, what causes and sustains both desirable and undesirable behavior, and her knowledge and expertise of those principles as they apply to a broad spectrum of people.
As the co-founder of several successful companies, including Allwel, a healthcare company in Buffalo, NY, Priya admits that the favorite part of her role as a leader is the creativity that can be employed in solving work problems, using a mutual vision and value system that herself and her partner, Chris Brown-Hall, use as their guide for decision making. Through it all, Priya has a steadfast commitment to sustaining a workplace that is comfortable and respectful, where individuals can use their talents to flourish and grow and, where they can achieve recognition and value.
PintoHall Leadership was established in June of 2023. In co-leading Allwel with Chris Brown-Hall (and Don Cuddihy—one of the original partners), Priya discovered her passion to help people grow and be their best selves. In March of 2023, Chris and Priya became certified Maxwell leadership trainers. Through this certification Priya is excited to take her experience to a new level where leaders look past the standard definition of performance, as measured only by growth of the bottom line, to performance where the bottom line grows because employees are excited and invested and adopt the company mission as their own. Whether it is understanding their communication styles or those of their team members to understanding what blocks them from success and how to remove those blocks- Priya is excited to help the individual assess and develop their own leadership skills.
Chris Brown-Hall, M.A., CRC
Partner
Certified Maxwell Leadership Trainer, Coach, and DISC Consultant
Legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi once said, “Leaders are not born, they are made.” Chris is a firm believer in this statement, particularly because of how accurately it describes his journey from a person who was born to serve to a person who has had to learn to lead. A certified rehabilitation counselor by training, Chris’ early career offered him the opportunity to serve people professionally in a variety of roles including Vocational Evaluator, Rehabilitation Counselor, Human Resource and Education Consultant, and Trainer. Each of these roles, in their own way, fulfilled Chris’ innate need to demonstrate care for others and add value to their lives.
In 2000, an opportunity presented itself for Chris, along with his business partner, Priya Pinto and Don Cuddihy, to start a healthcare company. Looking back, it seems incredulous that he even agreed to take this on as a challenge because none of them had any kind of business expertise or experience. The only thing they had in common was the desire to serve, and a set of values that cemented their combined commitment to grow a unique company.
Allwel, originally New Frontiers in TBI incorporated, was thus born out a unique desire to do business along with what seemed like an incompatible wish to make the workplace an environment where people can be themselves, grow, express their ideas, and be valued as individuals. This delicate task of balancing commerce with the inner knowing that employees will perform best when valued, led Chris down several paths including Vistage, an executive coaching organization where leaders can share expertise, challenge one another to think critically and to build lifelong leadership excellence. And through Vistage and all his years at Allwel, Chris discovered that what he truly wanted to do was to help others in the same way that he had been helped: first to understand himself and what drove him and then to understand other individuals and what drove them. This knowledge helped him hone his own leadership skills.
In March of 2023, Chris and Priya became certified Maxwell leadership trainers. Chris’s years at Allwel served as the foundation that helped him understand the value of something like a DISC assessment: which could be the foundation for effective communication in the workplace. That, as well as the wealth of resources through the Maxwell platform for understanding what constitutes leadership, and what can help build a truly high functioning high performance team, led to the birth of PintoHall Leadership LLC earlier this year.
Chris is excited to help leaders on their personal and professional leadership journeys. He believes in integrity and excellence and will work with you to help achieve your goals, no matter what it takes, because your success is not only his success, but fulfills his own deep sense of mission.