Meet some of Strategic Partners, Inc.’s team of highly experienced, expert coaches.
Jan Boxer Jan Boxer’s typical coaching client is someone whose career is on an upward trajectory and who is ready to look inward and challenge limiting beliefs in order to elevate performance, communicate more powerfully, increase executive presence, and expand strategic agility and influence across organizational or agency lines. As Strategic Partners’ Executive Coaching Practice Leader, Ms. Boxer oversees the work of 20 highly experienced coaches and organizational consultants who work with executives, leadership teams, new or high potential managers, and newly forming or struggling teams. Jan Boxer consults to organizations building coaching programs from the ground up and leads SPI’s efforts in providing these organizations with ongoing coaching program oversight. Read more about Jan.
Marellen Aherne Marellen is a leadership coach and senior consultant with over 25 years of experience as a business executive, consultant, and coach. Having worked in a variety of settings and with very different types of organizations during her career, Marellen brings a unique blend of practical experience in developing dynamic, integrated solutions to complex business problems. As an organizational consultant, her areas of expertise include: Executive Coaching, Leadership Development, and Team Coaching and Facilitation.
Mary Jo Ammon Mary Jo is an experienced coach to individuals, teams and leaders, as well as an accomplished strategist and organization development and process improvement consultant. Mary Jo’s open and approachable style enables her to work closely with executives and line employees to identify and remove barriers to implementation. She is a powerful facilitator and coach, adept at creating a safe and trusting environment so that people feel comfortable bringing their best ideas to the table. Mary Jo has completed an International Coach Federation (ICF) Accredited Coach Training Program (ACTP) as well as Coaching Excellence in Organizations (CEO), a post-graduate program for experienced coaches, through Newfield Network.
Terry Britton As a leadership coach and senior consultant with Strategic Partners, Inc., Terry specializes in assisting individuals, groups, and organizations in increasing their effectiveness. Ms. Britton combines a passion for coaching with years of experience training managers in leadership effectiveness, team building, and communication skills. Ms. Britton skillfully blends her knowledge of operations, finance, and organizational development when assisting clients responsible for leading organizations through change processes or new business initiatives. She coaches senior leaders to effectively communicate their vision, manage change from a systems perspective, and build teams that realize and surpass their goals. Terry is also a Trainer.
Keith Earley, JD Keith is an organization development consultant with domestic and global experience. His expertise is in large scale change management and leadership development, diversity, team building, conflict resolution, and organizational assessment. Prior to becoming a consultant, Keith served as Vice President for Human Resources for Freddie Mac. In addition, Keith has more than 15 years of experience as a corporate attorney, covering a broad range of disciplines including employee relations, employee benefits, EEO, HR strategy, compliance and corporate governance functions.
Lori E. Ermi – Lori’s focus is executive presence, emotional intelligence, strategic alignment, communications, influencing others, success in a new role, leading change, building effective teams, dealing with conflict, optimizing performance and execution, and has been developing leaders at all levels since 1991. She has trained over 1,000 leaders in coaching, negotiating, managing, leading, communication, executive presence, and diversity. She has coached leaders, both domestically and internationally. She understands the complexity, responsibility, and pressure on and among leaders first hand. Clients appreciate her business focus, pragmatic, and real world perspective. She combines her business experience of working with hundreds of leaders with tools, frameworks, and models. A skilled facilitator, she has partnered with dozens of leadership teams on strategic planning and team effectiveness initiatives. She helps hold her clients accountable for sustainable results by providing a structured approach in setting milestones and a scorecard.
Kathryn Gaines, Ph.D Dr. Gaines helps clients achieve results by building leadership capacity, commitment, and competence. She has 15 years of experience as a management and organization development consultant and coach.
Kathryn partners with clients to strengthen performance and communication in the workplace, navigate changes and challenges, build collaboration at all levels, and foster the highest levels of employee engagement and accountability.
Bonnie Holloway Bonnie has over 30 years of experience in human resources, specializing in the area of professional development administration, training design and delivery, and leadership coaching. Instructional areas include management and leadership, coaching skills, verbal and written communications, negotiation and conflict management, interviewing, performance counseling, and individual development plan guidance. She also provides instruction to technicians who are called upon to delivery training. Bonnie is also a Trainer.
Heather Kaye Heather fosters engagement at all levels of organizations, helping leaders realize their visions and transform those plans into measurable results. She has over 25 years of hands-on business experience and brings insight gained as a senior manager and consultant to government agencies, nonprofit organizations and corporations. She understands what it takes to succeed and rise to top leadership; her approach is direct, committed, and customized to meet the individual situation. Heather holds a Master’s degree in organizational development from American University is an ICF professional certified coach and former faculty member of the Newfield Network coach training school.
Leah Kedar Leah has over 25 years of experience leading organizational change efforts worldwide. She works with clients in the U.S. and internationally, facilitating organization transformation from the inside out, helping teams, leaders and organizations in diverse organizational environments, including: government, corporate, not-for-profit, political and academic. Ms. Kedar is known for her exceptional ability to bring together disparate voices in the pursuit of common goals. She is the author of “Voices of Children: AIDS Orphans in the District of Columbia” and editor of Power Through Discourse. Ms. Kedar is based in Washington, D.C.
Heather O’Neill Jelks, MS, ACC has over 18 years of experience in the fields of organization and leadership development with a background in leadership coaching, facilitation, conflict resolution, as well as leadership training design and delivery. Heather coaches leaders and their teams in business, health care, the federal government, law firms, and the non-profit sector toward greater self-awareness and skill in: leadership presence; effective communication; relationship-management; strategic focus; conflict resolution; and, influencing positively. Her federal agency coaching roster has included leaders at the US Department of the Interior, the Federal Emergency Management Administration, and the US Department of Transportation Security. Heather is a certified leadership coach accredited by the International Coach Federation (ICF) and was trained through the Coaches Training Institute (CTI), an acclaimed coaches training program. She is currently on the certification track for Somatic Coaching by the Strozzi Institute. She graduated from Georgetown University and holds a Master’s Degree in Organization Development from the American University/NTL program as well as a graduate certificate in Conflict Resolution from George Mason University. Heather recently trained in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction with Jon Kabat-Zinn and is also a trained professional mediator.
Don Peterson Don Peterson has over 20 years of management and executive experience in large organizations including government enterprises. Having served in a variety of positions at the executive level he is able to bring a “been there, done that” credibility, understanding and rapport. Don offers a distinctive blend of technical business management experience and strong skills in executive and employee development, conflict resolution, group facilitation, team problem solving and negotiation. During his career, Don successfully played lead roles in a variety of major organizational change initiatives. He led the development of new automated systems, oversaw restructuring of major processes, and was a pioneer in moving his organizations toward participative management, labor-management partnership and stakeholder collaboration. Don is also a Trainer.
Lloyd Raines Lloyd is an ICF Master Certified Coach and is a founding faculty member in Georgetown University’s Leadership Coaching Program, where he continues to teach. Lloyd has coached over 50 leaders at the VP levels and above (including C-level leaders), as well as over 30 SES-level government leaders. He has supported leaders in promotional transitions, cultural/business integrations, strategic awareness and engagement, alignment of teams around strategic objectives, development of talent, strengthening mutual accountability, and related leadership issues. Additional topics for leadership coaching have included strategic communication and executive presence, pivotal and courageous conversations, building alignment across teams and handling conflict, building and leveraging stakeholder relationships, context-setting agility, emotional intelligence and somatic intelligence.
Alicia Rodriguez Ms. Rodriguez is an ICF Professional Certified Coach and is trained as a Certified Leadership Coach through Georgetown University’s prestigious certification program.
Additionally, her female executive clients benefit from her professional and academic specialization in Women’s Development and extensive research and writing on diversity and gender topics. She is also certified to deliver the cutting-edge 360 assessment – The Leadership Circle Profile™ – for individuals and teams.
Lee Salmon Lee’s typical coaching client is a government leader who is in transition- stepping into a new assignment or career, being faced with the need to reorganize, or confronted with extraordinary change and crisis. Lee works primarily with political appointees and senior executives across the executive branch of government. He has 22 years of government service and recently retired from the National Business Center in the Department of Interior. His clients value him as a trusted partner able to help them develop their leadership and manage difficult professional and life transitions. Lee earned a Bachelor and Masters Degrees in Physics from UCLA and California State University Northridge and a graduate certificate in change management from Johns Hopkins University. He is certified to use numerous leadership assessment tools.
Barrie Zucal, MS develops global leaders. She is a global leadership coach, global entrepreneur, and therapist, with twenty-five years’ experience developing the human potential and performance of leaders in the US, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and most recently Africa. Barrie trains experienced executive coaches worldwide to transition to become global leadership coaches who can coach to the specific needs of leaders in global roles. She has developed a network of 175 coaches who work in 55 countries and coach in 35 languages.
Barrie coaches senior leaders to develop the interpersonal, intercultural, and global leadership competencies they need to have influence in multiple markets while she helps them to expand their perspectives and find new ways to deal with their business challenges. She helps leaders navigate the complexities of the global workplace where differences such as gender culture, race, religion, etc. have the potential to derail people and processes. Currently she is dedicated to developing more women who get to higher positions in organizations, governments, and political office so that the opinions of women will be heard, along with those of men, at the highest levels of influence.
