Susan has 1500+ paid coaching hours working with over 300 organizations across Fortune 500 organizations in the United States, Canada, Europe, and South America.  Susan's approach to coaching is relationship focused with the goal of helping the client achieve their goals. Susan’s authentic style is approachable and warm. Susan is astute in listening and being able to bring out the best in others, enabling them to learn more instinctively. Susan has leveraged her unique education and training in business, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and theater to help others find their voice, leadership style, and leverage their personal strengths to make them better leaders. Susan has helped new people leaders and executives alike. Her power in asking thoughtful questions while being an active listener and balancing the right approach to challenge client's beliefs and assumptions while being their top cheerleader is her unique signature. Implementing a company vision can be challenging. Susan has helped leaders realize their vision by working with both executive teams and groups on how best to collaborate to bring their vision to life.

Susan has led Senior Management Teams strategy sessions to set a three-year company vision with clear key performance indicators. Susan's niche is partnering with New People Leaders, and Women in Executive positions. She brings deep experience to launching a coaching program in an organization, as well as coaching with the goal of accelerating high potential development to prepare top performers for their next role.

Susan has held Executive Human Resources roles at JD Irving Limited. She successfully founded and sold a human resources consulting business in St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador (Higher Talent) and is currently building a coaching firm, PowerUp Leadership, based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Susan understands the challenges of entrepreneurship firsthand and knows how agile entrepreneurs need to be to thrive. Susan volunteers with Entrepreneur Atlantic Chapter Accelerator Board, CPHR Nova Scotia, and also serves as Past President on the board of the Atlantic Chapter of the International Coach Federation, and the Nova Scotia Labour Board. Susan enjoys spending time with her sons (William & James), spin class, running and traveling.

Coaching Engagements Susan Led

New People Leader 

A star employee was promoted to an Operations Manager role responsible to lead a team of five for the first time in his career. Coaching was deployed to set him up for success in his position and brainstorm approaches for tackling different challenges that came up with leading his team. The client successfully engaged in conversations about performance feedback and career development and was able to gain the support and buy-in of both his Executive Director and his direct reports to be successful in the role.

Leadership Alignment and Communication 

A Senior Management Team wanted to elevate their ability to engage in meaningful dialogue and difficult conversations with each other. Susan was engaged to coach the team 1:1 to set development goals to increase their leadership effectiveness and ability to communicate with each other. Leadership circle 360-degree assessments, Clifton 34 Strength Finder Assessment, and The Attentional and Interpersonal Style (TAIS) Assessment were engaged to identify development areas. The team achieved clarify on differences in communication styles and set a more intentional leadership style that tapped into their combined strengths.

Emerging Leader 

A young professional was seeking clarity on what were meaningful career goals that motivated her and what strategies she could use to increase her credibility as a new joiner to an organization. The coaching is still in progress and has resulted in the client advocating for herself with principals in the practice and taking a more hands-on approach for her own career.

New CEO 

An Indigenous organization hired a new leader who needed to forge new relationships with the team and community leaders. Strategies for setting a clear direction and build alliances with the Board and the community leaders were focused on during one-on-one coaching sessions. The leader identified clear strategy but ended up exiting the role as he decided a lengthy weekly commute was not feasible for him in the long-term.

Successor Readiness 

A family business in the United States with 200+ employees identified the son as the successor for the business. Susan facilitated individual weekly coaching with the successor to identify challenges taking over a family business from the father, and to help the client define what culture and company vision he had for growing the firm over the next three years. The coaching is still in progress, and culture initiatives have been deployed by the successor.

Work-Life Balance 

A Director of Talent at a US software company is a new mother and struggled with balancing work and home responsibilities. She was having challenges with self-care and stress management and looking to give herself permission to step-back from her role after-hours and focus on her family. Goals were set to support her in her work-life-balance goals, with progress made on goal attainment, and coaching continues bi-weekly with this client.

Accreditations / Qualifications