Growth Circles
2022 Women, Wisdom, and What's Next?

Carolyn Coughlin is passionate about supporting people, including the leaders with whom she works, not only to grow into their biggest selves, but also to live as fully as they can. She was introduced to the idea of adult development about 15 years ago shortly after leaving her career as a management consultant, and it was love at first sight. Carolyn believes that as the complexity of our world and our lives increases, it will be by paying greater attention to the ways we and our clients make sense of the world that we can uncover new ways to see differently, to be differently, to take different actions, and to live into the fullest version of ourselves and our lives—thereby expanding our possibilities to impact the world in increasingly positive ways. Carolyn has been an executive coach, facilitator, and leadership development specialist for over 15 years. Her journey began in the corporate world, where she was a management consultant first at Price Waterhouse and later at McKinsey and Company. With her fellow Cultivating Leadership partner Jennifer, Carolyn co-designed and runs the Growth Edge Certification series, an endeavor that continues to provide her with endless joy and learning. She also has a keen interest in supporting women to step into leadership positions in greater numbers so that we might finally achieve the power parity toward which we’ve been (slowly) moving over the last century. She writes and talks about developmental coaching, why and how it can be such a powerful support to growth, and how, in particular, she thinks it might hold promise for shifting the gender imbalance in our leadership ranks. Carolyn has also become increasingly interested in the role of the whole self, the realm of sensation and emotion, and how those, together with language, can be powerful ways into both noticing and intervening our own and our clients’ meaning-making patterns–and she approaches her coaching and organizational work through that lens. Carolyn earned an A.B. in Economics from Brown University, an M.B.A. with distinction from the Wharton School, and an M.A. in International Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a Certified Somatic Coach through the Strozzi Institute, a Qualified Administrator of the Intercultural Development Indicator, and a certified user of the Global Leadership Profile, the Leadership Circle, and the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. Carolyn, whose childhood family vacations included not trips to Disney, but week long backpacking trips through the mountains of Wyoming, loves natural beauty and the outdoors second only to her family. She has lived and worked extensively in New Zealand and many countries in Latin America and currently lives with her husband on the campus of a boarding school outside Princeton, New Jersey and spends her summers in a small cabin on a lake in the Catskills of New York State, where they are often joined by their three young adult children.

Sheila is passionate about enabling senior leaders, top teams and organizations to lead effectively in complexity and ambiguity, expose patterns, assumptions and blind spots, and reach beyond habits to unleash leadership capacity. She is committed to introducing ideas that help leaders engage, think, act, and notice differently, and actually embody these new ideas by applying them in real and immediate business challenges. Sheila believes curiosity, awareness and compassion are critical for leaders courageous enough to discover and push the edges of their leadership. She deeply admires the human condition and brings honesty, generosity, and lightness to her work while also holding results as a top priority. She approaches leadership development as a journey, not an intervention and equips leaders and organizations with tools for ongoing development and growth. Sheila brings over 30 years as a trusted advisor to senior leaders through experience in top tier and boutique management consulting firms, as a start-up co-founder and a mother, along with a Harvard MBA. 10 years ago she took the leap to follow her passion into executive coaching and leadership advisory, focusing on individual and collective leadership effectiveness. One of Sheila’s proud career moments was joining Cultivating Leadership. Sheila’s clients include Fortune 1,000 companies, venture backed start-ups and mission driven organizations in industries including technology, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, oil and gas, financial services and more. When Sheila is not advising leaders, you can find her in an art museum, collaging, hanging out with her three teenage daughters, hiking or cooking. She also practices meditation and is deeply exploring energy work and somatics. Sheila lives in Austin and dreams of living in a castle in the countryside of France.