Karen Elmhirst is an experienced educator, coach and consultant working in the domains of leadership and communication. Her history as a sales and marketing executive has provided a solid foundation of real-world experience that informs her work with clients. Karen has provided coaching and consulting to a wide range of businesses, including high tech, financial services, biotechnology, healthcare, internet businesses, professional services, travel, non-profit and entrepreneurial start-ups.

Karen works with leaders entering new roles to help them onboard successfully. She also works with well-established senior leaders to build their influence, address strategic priorities, create high-performing teams, and develop their successors. When leaders are preparing for high-stakes meetings and presentations, Karen offers her expertise to help them develop and deliver compelling messages that inspire others to take action. Karen also works with organizations to improve the overall quality of their communications, ensuring that messages achieve their intended results and stimulate valuable conversations with stakeholders.

Prior to becoming an executive coach and consultant, Karen spent twenty years as a sales and marketing leader within multiple industries — media, business services, corporate training, advertising, consumer products and hospitality. Karen has been engaged in both large, multinational firms and small internet start-ups.

As Senior Leadership Analyst for HR.com, Karen was responsible for conducting secondary research, reporting out on the best practices of leaders, and analyzing the optimal methods of developing leaders. She has presented at national conferences and has delivered educational workshops, both online and in-person. Karen has also written several articles for human resource and leadership publications, and for three years hosted a bi-weekly webcast series with leading business experts.

Karen was trained as a coach through the Coaches Training Institute and has completed partial coursework for her Masters in Counseling Psychology. She has furthered her learning with extensive research on leadership best practices and with formal training in systems coaching, presentation skills coaching, and facilitation. Karen is an Honors graduate in Commerce from the University of British Columbia, Canada, and now lives with her family in Marin County, California.