Coach Kelly has been an external Amazon Coach since 2008, when she joined the original team of 5 seasoned executive coaches supporting the global Amazon Leader of Leaders program. She has since coached hundreds of Amazon leaders internationally across diverse business units and functional roles from Director through SVP and select cross-functional leadership teams.
Earning the “Coach Kelly” moniker from a team she led in the late 1990s inspired Kelly to continue her long-term vision to “one day” become an executive coach. She is now a seasoned executive leader, award-winning coach, published author, and strategic thought partner with over 30 years of combined corporate and entrepreneurial experience. A belief that mastery is a journey, not an end, drives her to continuously hone her craft and further expand an already extensive toolkit. This translates to helping you achieve valuable and sustainable impacts faster and more reliably.
Coach Kelly’s breadth includes extensive experience coaching diverse executives, leadership teams, and entrepreneurs spanning 6 continents and 30 sectors, from tech start-up, to family-owned, to the “Fortune 50”. Her depth includes the significant personal dedication required to sustain the highest level of coaching industry accreditation, and a concentration in coaching internationally diverse executives in fast-growth environments, many with global responsibility and multi-billion-dollar P&L impact. Her passion is accelerating “authentically effective” impacts for both people and results.
Coach Kelly specializes in:
- Executive On-boarding – Accelerating the effectiveness of executive transitions, such as international rotations, expanding scope, and related scaling needs.
- Rising Stars – Accelerating growth through mid-career, high-potential, entrepreneurial, internationally diverse executives in high-growth Fortune 100 organizations to further up-level strategic perspective, presence, confidence, and impact.
- Diamonds in-the-rough – Helping successful leaders refine the “soft skills” required to scale effectiveness while polishing emerging leadership strengths for ever more senior role.
- Leadership Team as Flywheel – Helping Team Leaders to optimize performance through diverse leadership teams to scale effective impacts for both people and results.
Coach Kelly developed a “leadership from the inside-out” philosophy over two decades of leading diverse teams through significant transitions, including the dot-com boom, bust, and recovery, mergers and acquisitions, and privately held to employee-owned business transitions. She became a Puget Sound Business Journal “40 under Forty” leadership honoree, affirming the vision to make her passion for coaching leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs the central focus of her work.
Prior leadership roles include:
- President & COO – National Information Technology services firm.
- Board Member – Serving on boards of privately-held non-profit and for-profit organizations.
- VP of Core Services (HR, Finance, and IT) – National Information Technology firm.
- Regional Program Manager & Senior Consultant – International Management Consulting firm specializing in mid-market enterprises.
- Director of Operations – Western Region Digital Media division of a publicly held, global branding, eLearning, and events agency.
Clients describe Coach Kelly as a “gifted systems thinker” with a unique blend of senior executive experience, strategic perspective, calming presence, and uncanny insight. In 2014 she received the “Coach of the Year” award, Washington State, from the International Coach Federation for her work with a select team of coaches developing leaders at a global, Seattle-based family foundation.
Raised in a family transferred every three years by IBM (fondly referred to as “I’ve Been Moved”), from an early age Kelly attended an international K-12 school and became fluent in a second language. This immersive experience informs her facility and passion for working with diverse executives, contexts, and organizational cultures. Kelly and her partner of 27 years are based in the greater Seattle area, where she specializes in working via phone and video with diverse leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs worldwide.
Coach Kelly’s commitment to professional excellence and continuous learning includes:
- Master Certified Coach (International Coach Federation)
- Highest coaching accreditation (fewer than 5% of certified coaches worldwide in 2020 per ICF)
- Hudson Master Coach (Hudson Institute of Coaching)
- Certified Leadership Team Coach (Academy of Systemic Team Coaching)
- Accredited Coach Supervisor (Coaching Supervision Academy, “the coach’s coach”)
- Certified ACE Coach (WBECS Accelerating Coach Excellence)
- “Forty under 40” Leadership Honoree, Puget Sound Business Journal, Washington State
- “Coach of the Year” PRISM Award, Washington State, International Coach Federation
- Certified to administer over 14 leadership and team development instruments, including the customized Amazon 360
