Of course, he didn’t start there. In the mid 1970s, a PBS internship during college (Goddard & University of SC) led Carrison to an unusual job in San Francisco as a press agent for Ringling Bros & Barnum and Bailey Circus. He made the most of his new post by promoting the marriage of two circus midgets who captured the world’s attention with their devotion to one another. International coverage of the unique midget couple drew an offer from the Circus to be their National Director of PR in Washington , DC . His affiliation with the circus and all of its shows lasted over five years. After that, he returned to the West Coast to manage press relations for legitimate theater and performers (i.e. “The Wiz”, Clio Lane ).

Inspired by the enlightened principles of win/win business theories formulated by innovators like Buckminster Fuller, Carrison was drawn into organizational life. In 1981, as business manager for author Marilyn Ferguson (The Aquarian Conspiracy) he met important authors and theorists who collaborated with her. Warren Bennis, John Naisbett, Peter Senge among others, sought Ferguson ’s validation – all the while, giving Carrison a provocatively stimulating education. Carrison later joined a consulting firm dedicated to teaching win/win values. His first assignment was on a team facilitating a shift in the culture of an Asian department store chain from its patriarchal, eighteenth century model to an empowered-employee model. Carrison won the trust of the store managers, who then accepted the risk of learning new behaviors.

The next phase of his consultant’s education (late 1980s) was focused on an executive retreat that he and a partner created on a southern plantation. There, senior teams from corporations were invited to grapple with their interpersonal dynamics in order to learn more effective ways of working together. It was there, leading ropes courses and orienteering initiatives, that Carrison perfected his experiential learning skills. In 1991, with two colleagues, Carrison designed and implemented one of the first 360° assessment based Leadership Development programs in the U.S. for Cox Communications. Besides inventories, their program used coaching to amplify their clients’ development work. Unusual successes that outstripped development goals were tracked directly back to coaching – so much so that it became a reliable cornerstone for all future programs. Early in 2000 during graduate study at Catholic University , Carrison designed a development program for senior teams called Team Fitness. In it, leaders learned how to operate as a cohesive senior management unit, melding their departmental concerns into a unified, strategic view. 

Today, Carrison coaches senior leaders who work to make the most out of the “classroom” that their professional lives present to them. In large part, he’s successful as a coach because his clients have the courage to give voice to what they think and see…and to learn from it.