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Sara Keenan

"I now have a lifetime of skills and insights to support me and my goals."

Chief Marketing OfficerGlobal Nonprofit
Sara Keenan, PCC
Executive Coach and Consultant

Sara helps C-suite executives, senior federal executives and executive leadership teams effectively navigate complex changes by strengthening their resilience, alignment and engagement. She’s passionate about supporting senior executives who are preparing for and transitioning into new leadership roles, leading large organizational change initiatives, and building key leadership skills such as influencing and strategic thinking. Sara specializes in assessing skills and capability gaps through tailored interview-based 360 assessments, and observing leaders and teams in action.

Education

Sara was born, raised and educated in Ireland. She holds a master’s degree in international law with a specialty in human rights and emergency law, and a bachelor’s degree in business studies and French.

Her certifications include:

  • Certified in Organizational Change and Leadership Coaching, Georgetown University.
  • Myers Briggs and DiSC certified practitioner.
  • Professional Certified Coach (PCC), International Coaching Federation.
  • Certified in several leadership development tools, including emotional intelligence, Radical Collaboration ™, Resilient Leadership ™ and the five cohesive behaviors of a team.
  • Experience

    Prior to joining IOCI, Sara was the vice president of a fast-growing federal health consulting business unit for Suntiva LLC where she was responsible for hiring, performance management, business development, day-to-day operations and profit and loss. She has also managed leadership development contracts and programs for commercial and federal clients, and served as a change management subject matter expert on large change management initiatives focused on reorganization and culture change. Sara was a performance consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton’s senior executives, conducting strategic planning, team and organization assessments, and leading enterprise-wide change and culture change initiatives.

    Sara is a frequent conference presenter on topics including the psychology of resilience, factoring culture into hiring and effectively marketing new systems to end users. She is the author of two award-winning interventions focused on communication and feedback published by Jossey Bass.

    Expertise

    As a veteran coach with 20+ years of experience, Sara’s adept at providing direct feedback on strengths and development needs that get in the way of executive and team effectiveness, and a team’s ability to deliver results. She works with executives and teams to build robust development plans to close capability gaps. Her coaching and consulting clients are typically senior executives with backgrounds in science, engineering, health care, IT, law, finance, operations and consulting. Sara’s known for being collaborative, honest and practical in her coaching and consulting approach, bringing together people in ways that foster engagement and build momentum against desired objectives. She builds relationships based on trust and respect so that people feel comfortable opening up and disclosing information in a nonjudgmental fashion. Sara also designs and facilitates engaging strategic planning and training sessions. She created and facilitates a transformational, research-based, eight-session skills development program titled Cultivating Resilience®.

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