Leadership Excellence to Drive Value Creation
Address Challenges
mis-alignment of strategy and results, missed targets, gaps in executive and team integration and performance, performance of new CEO and executives, shortfalls in stakeholder communication; managing consequential change, top-level transitions, conflicting agendas, building leadership capacity for the next stage
Accelerate Value Creation
I help executives turn strategic priorities into organizational performance and concrete results by strengthening leadership performance – decision quality, measurable objectives, stakeholder alignment, team empowerment and performance, governance and clear accountability, disciplined and time-bound execution
Transform & Scale
I work alongside management as an independent and confidential thought partner—helping to prioritize, make difficult decisions, align the leadership team, manage sponsor and board relationships, and deliver effective implementation. I am an experienced 5x CEO & certified leadership coach
What We Do
The 5D Methodology combines executive coaching with real-world experience to help leaders make better decisions, align their teams and turn strategy into results. We help leaders perform at their best through our approach, individual and team coaching, reviews, ongoing support, our premium customized programs, and our results-driven philosophy.
Why Us
I’ve spent four decades leading organizations through growth, turnaround, market evolutions, geopolitical crises, re-organizations and difficult organizational situations. I am a certified Transformative Leadership Coach (Berkeley Transformational Leadership Coaching Institute).
As a 5x CEO, with an early stint in private equity, M&A and venture capital, I experienced the need for performance-driven leadership.
I bring operating expertise and training to managers who don’t need another consultant—but a seasoned, unbiased growth partner.
WHO WE SERVE
CEOs and their teams at the intersection of objectives, consequential change, multiple stakeholders, alignment and conflict resolution.
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Private equity portfolio companies—mitigate management risk and accelerate value creation.
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Venture backed enterprises—help leaders with transitions, scaling and pivotal inflections.
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Founder and family-owned businesses—team building, alignment, succession, generational transfers, governance.
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Individual leaders—improve personal effectiveness, behaviors, skills, and traits
WHAT WE DO
APPROACH
Build leadership capacity to achieve organizational outcomes and targeted results.
Our services cover:
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Executive and team coaching and development.
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CEO and founder advisory.
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Comprehensive yet tailored plans to fit your priorities—not standardized playbooks or frameworks.
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Premium custom offerings such as reviews and ongoing support.
Our services are all based on our results-driven 5D Methodology. The Five Dimensions work together to deliver leadership effectiveness.
A great strategy can still fall short if the organization can’t execute. 5D helps to identify where a leadership upgrade is necessary—and how to go about it.
5D METHODOLOGY
We work closely with you to understand the challenge, the context, and the objective. We then develop a value-creation plan tailored to the leader, team and situation. No cookie-cutter programs, no predetermined templates. The work follows what is most important to you. And leadership performance is not one thing. It is an interconnected blend and balance of the five key dimensions of effective leadership:
Model—how you show up
Self-awareness, emotional intelligence, integrity, presence
Assess—accurately frame the situation
Context, trends, risks, opportunities, choices
Communicate—create clarity
Vision, values, objectives, alignment, difficult conversations
Empower—build organizational capacity
Develop engaged, high-performance teams with trust, responsibility
Execute—convert decisions and intentions into outcomes
Priorities, operating cadence, accountability, follow through
“The 5th Dimension is achieved when individuals are prepared to act for the benefit of others through selfless service.” D.C.
WHY US
OUR DIFFERENCE—REAL-WORLD OPERATING EXPERIENCE + TOP LEVEL COACHING
5x
CEO
Startup
Strategic growth
Turnaround
Family business
DECADES
4
Building and refining
the foundation and
approach for 5D Leadership
10
INDUSTRIES
3 sectors
Private
Public
Nonprofit
COMMITMENT
100%
Confidential
Candid
Non-Judgmental
Independent
Actionable decisions
Results
I’ve built teams, I’ve worked with boards, investors, operating partners, employees, partners, customers, founders and family businesses.
No agenda. No judgement. No politics.
Just a confidential sounding board to help see situations as they really are, identify assumptions and blind spots, parse difficult decisions and turn insights into action.
MY STORY
Making decisions and implementing change—where you don’t control the environment or the competition, where information is limited, where there are conflicting perspectives, high stakes and strong emotions—and then implementing those decisions, whether personally or with your team, that is the art of leadership.
Throughout my career I have chosen roles where I could learn and practice transformational leadership and teamwork under challenging conditions. Everything from business, nonprofit, and academia to high altitude mountaineering teams, Outward Bound and offshore ocean racing crews.
As a 5x CEO, in different sectors and at varying scales, I saw the need for effective coaching, leadership and team development. Encouraged by professionals in the field, I created 5D Leadership as an outgrowth of my experience:
-Navigated changing markets and guided teams and entities through pivotal inflection points – troubled situations, major geo-political crises, re-positioning, team building, strategic partnerships. Achieved significantly increased revenues, operating margins and team performance.
-Serving on boards, founding two search funds, and early experience in private equity, M&A and venture capital taught me about building teams, the drivers of value creation, and that proper execution is essential.
-MBA, BA, Stanford University. Transformative Leadership Training, Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute. Corporate Finance Adjunct Instructor, Golden Gate University. Academic Advisor, Stanford University.
TESTIMONIALS
CASE STUDIES
From CEO Instability to 3x Revenue
Situation: The premier experiential global travel company was constrained by leadership capacity—repeated CEO turnover and an existential global crisis.
Initiatives: Rationalized and aligned the organization; rebuilt the management team; launched new marketing programs and actively created an effective culture that improved team performance; formed exclusive partnerships with the National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian, and the New York Times.
Result: Revenues grew threefold and unit profits 50%.
An 80-year Old Family Business Finds Its Next Chapter
Situation: An 80-year-old family business lost both its president and its owner leaving the company leaderless and adrift. The company faced increased competition, shrinking market, declining sales and flagging morale.
Initiatives: Repositioned the company; aligned and empowered key personnel, developed new products and customers; created platform for the next stage.
Result: Revenue grew 50% in just two years and a platform was created for the next stage.
From Startup to Successful Exit
Situation: A Silicon Valley startup needed leadership and strategic repositioning as it approached its next stage.
Initiatives: Stabilized operations and rationalize the organization, re-positioned the company from a technology orientation and aligned the team around product/market fit.
Result: Successful exit through a strategic sale.
Building Organizational Leadership Capacity
Situation: In another engagement, the challenge was not simply individual leadership. It was building the capacity of an organization to achieve ambitious goals.
Initiatives: Modernized an annual 9-month long leadership course designed to accelerate the development of career professionals chosen in a highly selective process. This involved leadership guidance organizational alignment, communication, accountability and execution. Developed new elements for the course – field and team building exercises, new tools, enriched curriculum, and in-person coaching.
Result: Stronger organization capable of aligning people around a common mission.
Professionalizing a New Family Business
Situation: A three-generation family, whose members had disparate backgrounds and perspectives, was struggling to develop a newly-acquired family business. Complicated family dynamics contributed to the challenge.
Initiatives: Instituted vision, governance, and decision-making. Engaged differing family members and coached them through a decision framework that is collaborative and forward looking.
Result: Now coaching the senior family member on developing alignment and accountability to execute operating plans in anticipation of succession planning.
CONTACT US
Let’s talk about what’s really happening. You don’t need the problem perfectly defined before we connect. Maybe you just need a confidential place to think. Let’s start there. A first conversation is an opportunity to understand:
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What’s happening
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What you’ve tried
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What’s at stake
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What you want to accomplish
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Whether 5D is the right fit
Leadership advisory is not about providing answers, but something more valuable: experience, judgment, perspective and a commitment to your leadership effectiveness. Coaching should provide more than insight—the goal is changed behavior and better outcomes.
My job isn’t to tell you what you want to hear—it is to help you see blind spots, challenge assumptions, consider alternatives and help people move forward—let's talk.
Schedule a Confidential Conversation