Life As Leadership

Adam Kingl is a highly respected expert on leadership and culture, fulfilling organizational and personal purpose, and generational paradigms in the workplace. He has worked as the Regional Managing Director for Duke Corporate Education, leading the organization’s business in Europe, and advising clients on issues of adaptability, performance, creativity, and purpose. Before Duke, he was the Executive Director of Thought Leadership and Learning Solutions for London Business School. His new book, Next Generation Leadership: How to Ensure Young Talent Will Thrive with Your Organization just came out at the beginning of February.

Bill Coletti is a reputation management, crisis communications, and professional development expert who founded a company called Kith to help other organizations in these areas. He is also a keynote speaker, Wall Street Journal Risk & Compliance panelist, and best-selling author of Critical Moments: The New Mindset of Reputation Management. He has more than 25 years of global experience managing high-stakes crises, issues management, and media relations challenges for both Fortune 500 companies and winning global political campaigns.

Louis Fernandez is a former Army officer who deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division where he learned valuable leadership lessons (particularly related to high stress situations). After leaving the military, he joined a Fortune 100 company and led multiple teams that he oversaw to success. He is the author of Keep on Leading, a book focused on two things this podcast likes, which are learning and taking action. Now he’s looking to share the lessons he has learned to improve the American workplace.

Dave Gordon is an internationally recognized brand, marketing and communications expert. He is an inspirational leader, speaker and author with a mission to help people identify, communicate, and deliver their unique value to build stronger personal, team and corporate brands. Dave’s work has positively impacted teams, organizations and associations in countries around the world, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. His new book "TIP: A Simple Strategy to Inspire High Performance and Lasting Success" came out on January 29th.

Mark Hodgson helps motivated professionals to unlock their inner talents and create the successful and meaningful lives we all crave. He’s been a senior corporate leader in multiple countries and is a leading thinker in transformation and what it takes to thrive in complex times. A natural disruptor, he helps executives, entrepreneurs and business owners to build their personal brand and influence and is an expert in leading change. His first book, Time to Shine explains what we need to DO, BE and BUILD to show up as successful, fulfilled and authentic influencers. His second book, Second Half Hero, launches in 2020.

Rhea Wong has worked in the nonprofit sector for over fifteen years, twelve of them as an executive director. During her tenure as Executive Director of Breakthrough New York, she oversaw significant growth in the number of students served, in the staff, the budget and replication to three sites. She has become a leader in the New York educational community and is a frequent educational commentator in the media. She has been recognized with the SmartCEO Brava Award in 2015 and NY Nonprofit Media’s 40 under 40 in 2017. She is also the host of Nonprofit Lowdown, a podcast dedicated to the business of nonprofits.

Paul Stretton-Stephens is a mindset coach as well as a teacher, futurist, author, and speaker. He is a proud veteran and has for many years coached multiple sports and activities. He has travelled extensively and has lived abroad for some years, and he doesn’t let his visual impairment stifle his activities. He is happily married and lives in Devon, UK where he adores living by the sea.

Aviv Shahar is founder and president of Aviv Consulting, a strategic innovation consultancy. He is also the author of the book Create New Futures: How Leaders Produce Breakthroughs and Transform the World Through Conversation and hosts the Creating New Futures podcast. He has spent time as a fighter pilot for the Israeli Air Force, where he learned lessons he still uses today. Now, Fortune 500 companies hire him to help their senior teams create purpose-inspired futures and innovative strategies that drive growth.

Ben Baker has been helping his customers across North America communicate effectively for more than a quarter century. His believes that if your employees do not understand and live your mission, vision and values, your customers will never believe in them. He is the author of Powerful Personal Brands, facilitator of the How to Retain Employees Through Leadership workshop and course and host of the YourLIVINGBrand.live Show.

Angie Ward is a leader, teacher, writer, and pastor’s wife. She is an award-winning regular contributor to Christianity Today leadership publications and has served as a contributing editor and editorial advisor for Leadership Journal, Building Church Leaders, and Gifted for Leadership. She is also a highly regarded teacher and speaker, with classroom experience at Denver Seminary, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Trinity International University, and Lancaster Bible College. Her leadership experience includes roles in church, parachurch, nonprofit, and educational contexts. Angie’s latest book, I Am a Leader: When Women Discover the Joy of their Calling releases from NavPress in March 2020.

Em Ducharme started Zero to CEO to provide business strategy for influencers and experts looking to monetize and scale their audience. Her work has been featured on major media outlets such as Forbes, ThriveGlobal, The Good Men Project and Business2Community. As a former corporate sales consultant for Fortune 500 companies and major corporations, Em helped to grow and scale businesses for the last ten years in hospitality, finances, entertainment, and e-learning. She's raised millions of dollars in investor funds for the companies that she worked for and personally was able to scale her own companies past multi 6-7 figure mark in a record-breaking time.

John Klymshyn has been the architect for growth for teams and individuals in the arenas of executive communication, inspirational language and practical skills ranging from sales mentality to thought processes. His focus is the power of language. He is either traveling the world speaking about Deeper Dialogue™, Moving Conversations Forward™, or Mindful Leadership™, OR coaching executives, writing, and podcasting, and he recently came out with his newest audiobook, Deeper Dialogues: Conversations That Inspire.

Devin Cowick and Don Wilson co-founded their business “Code Pineapple,” where pineapple is the code word for unplugged fun. They help families with kids live a healthy, balanced life in the digital world through a four-part framework: screen habits, offline alternatives, self-esteem, and relationships. Together they have built Code Pineapple to be an award-winning publisher of multiple best-selling books and a leader in children's edu-tainment.

Shari Altergott has over 18 years of experience helping clients improve their Customers’ experience by implementing strategies that focus on people, product, process and feedback. During her career she has held several positions within Marketing, Business Development and Executive Leadership. She currently serves as the Chief Experience Officer at The CX Edge, a company that was created to serve the B2B community by developing and executing customer experience strategies that focus on client’s primary business objectives of increasing profitability by retaining and acquiring new business.

Debbie Morton has a passion to help others. It started when she had to restart her career at the age of 56. She had closed a home care business $100K in debt, and within months learned she and her husband’s entire million-dollar retirement savings was gone due to some bad investment choices. In a quest to begin a new career to avoid a 9-t0-5 job, she became an online marketer, a business coach and is currently a founding member and on the advisory board of the Young Entrepreneur Project that offers three pillars to help entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs succeed.

Ryan Narus started his entrepreneurial journey with no money, no experience, no capital, and no network. And after studying psychology and statistics at Wake Forest University and receiving his MBA, he also had plenty of student loan debt. But he refused to quit. He sacrificed, took bold action, and found creative ways to make money while he started and scaled his business. Now he is a self-made real estate entrepreneur who owns and operates 10 Mobile Home Parks spanning over 1,200 units, and he is on a mission to help others.

JoAnna Brandi is a Certified Chief Happiness Officer, a Happiness Coach and specialist in creating Customer Happiness. She is the author of two books on customer loyalty as well as an illustrated gift book called "54 Ways to Stay Positive in a Changing, Challenging, and Sometimes Negative World." She works with companies who want to energize, elevate and empower their people to take "Exquisite CARE" of their customers and their employees as a strategy to create lifetime value and profitability. She’s been in business 29 years, has clients in all shapes, sizes, and kinds of companies.

Joel Hawbaker is a professional speaker, coach, teacher, and Amazon best-selling author with years of experience in a wide variety of leadership roles. He is blessed to be able to share much of what he has learned with audiences and clients, and he loves to engage them through storytelling and humor. He currently lives in his hometown of Anniston, Alabama, with his wife, his two daughters, and his two dogs Butterscotch and Bruiser.

Jarrod Haning was a freelance musician who got tired of eeking out a living. He made three key changes that helped to double his income to $100,000 a year working 20 hours a week. This was a transformational move for him, and now he’s passionate about sharing how he made this transition because he believes it is the ticket to freeing up so many people in the business world. His clients have been able to double their income in the first year by using a Nobel Nominated process that teaches them how to think at a higher level. He believes that a breakthrough in your business will first happen as a breakthrough in your thinking.

Jacob Engel started an organization called Yeda LLC that provides seminars and courses to entrepreneurs and business owners. His mission is to empower leaders and managers through giving them the knowledge to change and helping them implement the changes in their organizations. Before his current job, Jacob was the COO of a $200M family food and real estate enterprise. He is the author of two books: The Prosperous Leader: How Smart People Achieve Success and The Ten Commandments of Family Business Succession.