team bios
Ellen Keithline Byrne, PhD – Co-Founder
Ellen is an executive coach, social scientist and leader who develops people to be mindful, courageous and innovative so they can thrive in their roles. She believes with guidance, individuals and teams become more aware of how their thoughts, feelings and behaviors influence their outcomes. Ellen holds a doctorate in Organizational Development and Change and has over 18 years of experience working both on a global learning and development team, and as a consultant servicing Fortune 500 companies like Morgan Stanley, Walmart and Microsoft, smaller firms, and non-profits including Save the Children. Ellen is a contributing author to Harvard Business Review, Forbes and Mindful.org.
Denise D’Agostino, CEC – Co-Founder
Denise, CEC, HR Leader and Executive Coach brings practical approaches and a high level of energy enabling leaders, teams and organizations to perform and deliver. Her 25 years of real-world experience as the Head of HR for both Bayer HealthCare and Ciba Specialty Chemicals offers a powerful advantage for her clients. Leaders value her creativity, ability to challenge the status quo and design comprehensive solutions that build talent at all levels of an organization. Equipped with her extensive HR experience and certifications in multiple psychometrics, Denise is well poised to help clients, ranging from Fortune 500 to start-ups reach their fullest potential. She is an adjunct instructor at Cornell University, the ILR School of Human Capital Development.
Karen Kirchner MS, PCC – Co-Founder
Karen Kirchner, MS, CPCC is an executive coach who challenges and supports women to amplify their voices and increase their impact. She has a 20-year track record of catapulting clients to greater levels of leadership effectiveness. Her years of HR at Citigroup and Reader’s Digest provide a business-savvy perspective, which combines powerfully with her optimism around people’s potential for change. Karen’s unique blend of intelligence, insight and creativity has made her a trusted partner to an impressive list of organizations, from Fortune 500 companies like Aetna to technology start-ups like Datto. Executives report that working with Karen helps them to elevate their presence and make better decisions, resulting in enhanced reputation and results.
Angelique Arnao Anderson – Executive Coach
Angelique is a certified coach who specializes in helping women leaders unlock their potential and enhance their performance to lead through challenges and drive their effectiveness. With over 20 years of experience in HR leadership and operations, Angelique brings a wealth of knowledge and strong business acumen to her coaching. Employing a unique Gestalt and Strengths-based Coaching approach that emphasizes expanding existing competencies and talents, Angelique empowers leaders to reach their full potential, opening doors to new choices, possibilities, and enduring change. She has worked with and partnered with global organizations and start-ups across diverse industries, including financial services, banking, entertainment technology, retail, and advertising and marketing.
Julie Anderson – Executive Coach & Facilitator
Julie is a former business leader who rose through the ranks at Saatchi & Saatchi and went on to serve as founder/CEO of two start-up marketing services businesses. As a leadership coach, Julie partners with her clients to create a safe space to identify the behaviors, thoughts, and values that serve them, as well as the blind spots impeding the fullest expression of themselves. Julie believes that the greatest personal satisfaction lives in the place where the truth of who you are intersects with what you do – the place she calls, the heart of the matter – and is committed to helping her clients find that place.
Julia Bunyatov, PCC – Executive Coach
Julia specializes in integrating behavioral neuroscience to help leaders and teams achieve goals and expand impact by optimizing performance and becoming resilient – at work and in life. Julia brings 25+ years of experience leading high-achieving teams across trading, risk management, and finance in investment banking, experience as a board member, business owner, and yoga teacher. Her clients value Julia’s masterful ability to balance challenge with support, guiding them to connect with innate internal capacities, resolving decision blocks, and unlocking the highest levels of potential to gain greater success and sustainable long-term effectiveness. Julia hired, supported, and mentored women throughout her career.
Alina Campos – Executive Coach & Facilitator
Alina is a certified coach with a passion for helping women leaders realize their greatest potential. Her coaching is heavily influenced by Positive Psychology which helps people develop thriving mindsets. Alina spent over 18 years in marketing and over a decade leading teams in operations and employee development. She understands the challenges women leaders face in the workplace, specifically around confidence, conflict management and burnout. Alina has worked with a wide variety of clients ranging from start-ups to major brands such as Apple, Salesforce, and LinkedIn.
Harpreet Chana – Executive Coach
Harpreet is a qualified pharmacist with over 20 years’ experience across the healthcare and corporate verticals including holding two senior national positions. Now a certified Executive Leadership Coach, she has worked with leaders across the globe across a number of disciplines and from Fortune 500 companies. Harpreet is passionate about harnessing personal excellence and the ‘leader within’ as the key to unlocking great leadership potential. She is a huge advocate for better workplace wellbeing, strong female leadership and helping develop and champion women from diverse backgrounds.
Toni Cortese, CPCC – Executive Coach
Toni is passionate about developing leaders and teams to achieve their professional goals and help organizations to reach greater success. Prior to coaching, Toni led global technology teams during her 25-year tenure in investment banking. Toni leverages a degree in International Relations and 20 years of self-taught forays into behavioral and social sciences to help her coaching clients see things from different angles and create new opportunities with new tools. The combination of her life experiences, approachable nature, and ability to see the broader context is what has led many colleagues to seek Toni’s counsel over the years.
Cassie Crosby – Executive Coach
Cassie Crosby is a certified coach who helps leaders unlock the courage and strength to overcome their toughest challenges. She is a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel who led multi-functional teams and organizations through some of the military’s most complex problems, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, for more than 20 years. She has extensive experience in leader development as well as public affairs, logistics and supply chain management, and strategic planning. She is the CEO of Iterata Solutions, Inc, a service-disabled veteran and women-owned business that develops and empowers underrepresented leaders. She co-authored My Green Notebook: “Know Thyself” Before Changing Jobs.
Cristina Custodio – Executive Coach & Facilitator
Cristina Custodio is an award-winning Master Certified Coach and facilitator with over 25 years of experience in leadership and management. The first 15 years were spent in various leadership roles in the management consulting, program management and engineering services industries. She coaches global changemakers in Fortune 500 companies, startups, governments, and NGOs. She has also facilitated complex group transformation processes for hundreds of organizations. Cristina, a Puerto Rico native, has a BA and MBA from Harvard University. She currently serves on the global Board of Directors for ICF Coaching Education and chairs its DEIJB Advisory Committee.
Francesca Danzi – Executive Coach
Francesca Danzi is a transformational leader and Certified Professional Co-Active Coach with 20+ years of global experience at companies like Burberry, Tory Burch and Deloitte Digital. Drawing on her Italian heritage and work across Europe, the U.S., and beyond, she brings a multicultural perspective to leadership development and team dynamics. A former ballet dancer, yoga teacher, and Course Leader at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Francesca blends mindfulness and creativity into her coaching. Passionate about empowering leaders, she helps clients achieve exceptional results with authenticity and balance while mentoring women entrepreneurs and enjoying art and yoga in her personal life.
Nancy Di Dia – Executive Coach
Nancy J. Di Dia is an ICF PCC certified executive coach with more than 35 years of leading and developing talent globally in Fortune 100 Businesses. Nancy’s career spans Financial Services, Pharmaceuticals, Manufacturing, Retail Banking, Sales, Marketing and Operations as well as Information Technology. Nancy’s focus is facilitating solutions and insights for her clients. She is the former chief diversity and inclusion officer for a global pharmaceutical firm. One of Nancy’s key focus areas is helping organizations, healthcare professionals and executives to harness their talents across the divides of gender, generations, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression and culture.
Tommie English – Executive Coach & Facilitator
Tommie enjoys helping leaders unleash their potential to have greater impact. She has over 30 years of people leadership experience serving as a senior executive in banking for 19 years and as an Executive Director in the nonprofit sector for 12 years. Tommie has coached and developed hundreds of leaders across the globe and led multiple initiatives to create more diverse and inclusive environments. She is passionate about helping leaders and individuals become more aware, authentic, effective, and intentional in achieving their professional and personal goals.
Shirin Eskandani – Executive Coach
Shirin Eskandani is a coach, writer and public speaker who has been featured as a wellness expert on the Today Show, The New York Times, The Doctors and Shape
magazine. Prior to building her successful coaching business she was an award winning opera singer, performing at Carnegie Hall and The Metropolitan Opera. Certified by the International Coach Federation, Shirin’s holistic approach transformation is rooted in mindfulness and mindset work. An inspiring and dynamic speaker, Shirin has worked with companies including Google, Ulta, Active Campaign and Sundance Film Festival. She hosts two podcasts Wholehearted Coaching: The Podcast and TGTS.
Tréasa Fitzgibbon – Executive Coach & Facilitator
Tréasa Fitzgibbon is a certified coach who specializes in helping women accelerate their careers. She is passionate about bringing more women into senior leadership. Prior to coaching, Treasa spent 20+ years in the Financial Services industry in Dublin, London and New York, culminating in a Managing Director role heading up a global sales team. Treasa understands the commitment required to be successful in today’s fast-paced environment, and is uniquely positioned to help women navigate the challenges they face in reaching their goals. Having spent years working around the globe, she also understands the complexity of adapting to differing cultures. Treasa is currently based in Ireland.
Jeanette Iglesias – Executive Coach & Facilitator
Jeanette is a certified coach with a passion for driving leadership success. She specializes in social and emotional intelligence, fostering inclusion, and promoting belonging. Jeanette spent 18 years of her early career as a retail marketing operations executive and later expanded her career portfolio to include extensive experience in executive coaching and consulting, facilitation, and entrepreneurship. Jeanette has supported female leaders at all levels by helping them find their passion, purpose, and success trajectory. Jeanette has coached clients in a wide variety of industries, including finance, insurance, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, energy, and non-profit sectors. Jeanette has worked with leaders in some of the largest and most recognized global corporations.
Melissa Kushnaryov – Marketing Manager
With more than 15 years of experience in marketing, Melissa has dedicated her career to empowering impact-driven organizations to amplify their message and enhance their brand. She thrives at the crossroad of creativity and strategy, and is driven by her passion for crafting compelling narratives that resonate with audiences and deliver tangible results.
Melissa is honored to work with Her New Standard to create transformational change, at both the individual and organizational levels.
Kathy McConnell, PCC – Executive Coach
Kathy stimulates leaders to access their potential, build their confidence and expand their creativity. For over 15 years, Kathy has focused her coaching practice on supporting clients who want to make a bigger impact and experience greater fulfillment in their work and life. Kathy has led programs and coached executives from organizations such as Meta, The Trade Desk and TikTok. Kathy has a background in marketing and draws on this expertise to deeply understand her clients’ needs and motivations. Kathy received her MBA from NYU Stern School of Business.
Linda Schnabel, PCC – Executive Coach & Facilitator
Accredited through the ICF, Linda has over two decades of solid experience as a leadership, team, and career development coach. With both private and public sector clients, Linda deploys her advanced coaches’ training to serve as a catalyst for organizational learning and leadership development. She has worked with hundreds of individuals, including C-suite leaders, to influence the expression of their leadership intelligence organizationally, supporting them to convert key objectives into success stories. She has worked in a diverse range of industries, including healthcare, packaged goods, transportation, technology, finance, insurance, food services, and manufacturing.
Emma Simpson – Executive Coach & Facilitator
A certified Executive Coach and Leadership Development Consultant, Emma has over 20 years of international HR and people leadership experience supporting leaders to skillfully navigate through complexity and change. Emma developed her coaching and development practice to support individuals and organizations looking to unlock extraordinary potential and inspire meaningful change that positively impacts themselves, their relationships, and the world. Using a presence-based approach and focusing on inner transformation for outer impact, leaders increase self-awareness and capacity, enabling them to break through barriers and thrive in their personal and professional lives. Originally from the UK, Emma now resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Jackie Stallings Evans, MBA, ACC – Executive Coach
Jackie Evans is a leadership consultant and coach who is passionate about supporting leaders and their teams to achieve positive, sustainable growth. Jackie expertly guides people to drive personal and organizational change by her honed coaching methodology as well as real-life experience. Jackie empowers clients with empathy as well as proven steps to define and meet goals. With a business background that ranges from technical sales to an executive level position at IBM, Jackie knows business and she knows how high-achieving leaders need to be supported in today’s competitive and rapidly evolving markets.
Milena Trevisani – Executive Coach & Facilitator
Prior to becoming a certified executive coach, Milena lived half of her life abroad in 7 countries and has extensive experience in Business Development and Sales. The past 10 years of her corporate career took place at The New York Times, out of the Paris office. Milena brings a rich combination of human and business understanding to the coaching process. Her holistic approach is informed by her training as a yoga and mindfulness teacher. Milena is fluent in English, French, Italian and Spanish. As a multilingual coach, she works with clients all over the world, especially with diverse teams, focusing primarily on Leadership Development and Women’s Empowerment.
Tracy Tsai – Executive Coach & Facilitator
Tracy is a certified coach who is passionate about helping women advance in the workplace. Tracy has 20 years of experience in the financial services industry. As a first-generation Asian American and mother of two girls, Tracy’s work is inspired by her vision for workplaces where women of all backgrounds can thrive. She works with emerging and senior women leaders to discover their own unique “success formulas.” Tracy’s clients describe her approach as holistic, empathetic and results-focused. She is honored to work with women to create transformational change, at both the individual and organizational levels.
advisors
Wagner Denuzzo, LCSW – Consultant and former Head of Capabilities for Future of Work, Prudential Financial
Wagner is a Latino executive currently leading the Future of Work Talent CoE at Prudential. His team is responsible for Organizational Capabilities, Work and Org Design, Change Management, Workforce Transformation Delivery, and Organization Effectiveness for a future-ready enterprise. Prior to this role, Wagner was leading Leadership Talent Transformation at IBM where he also served as the Global VP, Leadership and Management Development for the enterprise during IBM’s largest transformation in its history. Wagner has been a Talent Strategy Leader, Leadership/Organizational Development Consultant, Executive Coach, and HR strategist for over 20 years. Wagner is a frequent speaker on the Future of Work and his ideas are driving a new way of thinking in HR. He was born and raised in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and holds a bachelor’s degree in communications, and earned a Master’s in Clinical Social Work from New York University.
Ted Fleming – Talent Development Consultant and former Head, Talent Development, CVS Health.
Ted is passionate about helping people reach their potential, find enjoyable work and perform their best. He offers proven talent development solutions gained from more than 30 years of experience advising individuals and businesses. Ted is the author of Develop: 7 Practical Tools to Take Charge of Your Career. He speaks frequently on topics including managing your career, driving business results, and innovation.
Carol Jensen – Consultant, Former Chief People Officer and Chief Marketing Officer
Carol is an energetic, goal oriented C-Suite executive with a successful track record in both Human Resources and Marketing. She has broad industry expertise, with leadership roles in technology companies (Flatiron Health Chief People Officer), retail/foodservice (Wawa Chief Marketing Officer and Chief People Officer), and financial institutions (ING and Citigroup, VP People). Carol builds strong, trusting relationships to help develop individuals she works with to recognize opportunities and build the confidence to deliver better performance. Carol currently consults with CPOs and CEOs to ensure their people team strategy and approach aligns with business strategy and will enable desired outcomes. Carol also serves on the Board of Alula, a management consulting company that uses the principles of applied behavioral science to positively impact performance.
Cathy Jirak – Founding Partner and COO of QueBIT
Catherine Jirak is a founding partner and the COO of QueBIT, a Planning and Analytics consulting firm. QueBIT’s advises and implements enterprise wide planning and analytic solutions to companies of all sizes and across all industries. As COO, Cathy is responsible for company operations including sales, service delivery and support. Cathy also plays a key role in QueBIT’s strategic and technology partner relationships. Much of QueBIT’s growth can be attributed to Cathy’s advocating for a strong internal training program in conjunction with an active college recruitment effort. This has enabled QueBIT to develop a strong company identity and culture, which values the contributions of all members of its diverse workforce. This by far is what sets QueBIT apart from its competitors. Cathy began her career in public accounting before working in finance for a Fortune 500 company. Just prior to founding QueBIT, Cathy was the principal of her own accounting and tax firm. Cathy holds a BS in Accounting from the University of Scranton and her CPA. Outside of work Cathy loves to travel and is a passionate skier and golfer.
Kelsie Johnston – Head of Beauty & Personal Care, TikTok
Kelsie is an eCommerce and Omnichannel expert with a track record for driving transformation in digital and retail organizations. Creating value across various CPG and Luxury businesses, Kelsie has fostered diverse and innovative thinking to support organizational change at Macy’s, Saks, Gilt Groupe, Jet.com/Walmart eCommerce and Coty Global Beauty. Kelsie now works at Coty where she leads the transformation of US Digital & eCommerce initiatives, with a focus on building customer-centric, process-driven solutions to accelerate local market P&Ls and futureproof the digital Beauty experience.
