Groupaya supports leaders and leadership teams to skillfully create their future.
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Groupaya offers a new kind of leadership for a new kind of world.
Our clients:
Kristin Cobble is a co-founder and President of Groupaya. She has 20+ years helping C-level leaders, teams, organizations and multi-stakeholder groups realize their potential, through thinking bigger about what’s possible, and then making it a reality.
She is passionate about helping leaders learn how to create environments that tap into the knowledge, skills, talents and passions of their people, where everyone is smarter together than they could be alone. While most people see meetings as a waste of time, she loves helping leaders turn them into a place where real thinking, real decision making, and real relating happen. After all, if we are going to spend most of our time at work, shouldn’t we make our organizations, our jobs and our meetings something that renew us instead of drains us?
She has coached multiple CEOs, GM’s, and Presidents, as well as Chief Commercial Officers, Chief Marketing Officers, a Chief Financial Officer, a Chief Counsel, a head of R&D, several Executive Directors, and several heads of HR.
Her organizational development career began as a consultant at Innovation Associates, co-founded by Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. This work is foundational to her worldview – the importance of personal and collective vision, the need to think systemically, the value of slowing down to go fast, and the power of learning to see and challenge our own and others’ assumptions.
Prior to founding Groupaya, Kristin spent four years at Monitor and Global Business Network (GBN), helping clients to re-perceive and embrace uncertainty in order to achieve sustainable success through scenario thinking and planning. She also spent two years, as the Director of Strategic Change for Banana Republic, partnering with the president to create a high performing leadership team as well as a more innovative and collaborative organizational culture. In this role, for the first time in her professional life, she participated in leadership team meetings that she wasn’t facilitating, and developed a new level of appreciation for the challenges of being a C-level executive.
Kristin is a Wellesley graduate, studied at the London School of Economics. She was a member of the faculty at New Ventures West, a globally respected coaching school. She has authored articles on organizational learning, systems thinking, conflict and coaching and has presented at multiple conferences. Her article, "How to Start a Meeting," was featured in TIME. She is also an emeritus board member of Global Footprint Network, an international environmental NGO.
I believe the challenges we face as a species requires new ways of thinking, talking and working together – across disciplines, across values and across both visible and invisible walls.
Every time, at the end of an off-site, when a leader says something to the effect of, “Wow, I have a great team!” I love helping them to design a meeting in which their people pleasantly surprise them and blow them away.
Watching a group of 200 leaders and change agents of a multi-national company engage in conversations about the mindsets and behaviors that were going to be required to create their new, merged company. Shifting from distrust of one another to liking each other, before our very eyes.
Deep listening and illuminative questioning
Coaching, dance, family, Kansas basketball
Working with Groupaya since 2013, David has steadily transformed from his prior life as strategy consultant and startup founder to the very different discipline of empathic listener and ally in change and development. David is part of the core Groupaya team that continuously evolves our thinking and approaches, experimenting and evaluating new approaches for integration into the “Groupaya Way”.
Background
Dave brings a wealth of both consulting and operating/leadership experience to Groupaya’s leadership work. He started in strategy consulting for a global firm, PA Consulting Group, and ended up leading a business strategy practice for North America. He made the jump to operating in two startups and then founded and led SaaS platform company, Linkify, for 10 years, For details, see his linkedin profile.
Focus Areas
Everyone on the Groupaya team works with leaders and leadership teams in both team and one-on-one coaching modes. Given his background, Dave leans towards long term engagements where a wide range of experience helps him support clients across a diverse set of challenges: collaborative strategy development in one phase of the work, navigating corporate intrapreneurship in another, supporting the long term process of creating an OKR culture, or helping early stage entrepreneurs find their footing. Much of Dave’s work is with leaders of mid-size tech companies, but he has also worked extensively with non-profits in a range of sectors: ecological justice NGOs, several types of foundations, governmental/multistakeholder clients and spiritual organizations.
Testimonials
“Dave has a new approach I’ve never seen before. He brings focus and attention to many levels at once: Are we doing the right thing? How well is the team engaging? Am I showing up as the right leader for the moment for all the stakeholders? The result is that I’ve become much more of the leader I want to be, and have been able to delegate and depend on my team to do what they need to do. We’ve made really big strides.”
GM for business unit of major internet company
“I contacted Dave about providing coaching support during an organizational change process. I had worked with Groupaya and Dave previously as part of a larger exercise and was looking for dedicated support while working through some of the difficult challenges associated with any change process. I was particularly looking for a coach who could also help me learn and grow in the DEI space, somebody who would challenge my assumptions and my default responses as a cis white male. Dave has done all of that, and far more. I show up as a leader differently now, and I interact with my colleagues differently now. I'm learning how to be a collaborative leader, a convener rather than an authority. Dave has also helped me to recognize less-helpful patterns from other parts of my life that are showing up at work, and provided support in working through those as well. He's been an invaluable support and thought partner over the past year, and I cannot recommend him highly enough.”
Head of operations and finance, ecological justice organization
It's incredibly satisfying to see a team tackle a hard problem, or a big messy space, and emerge on the other side with momentum and excitement.
Debriefing meetings with our clients. The Groupaya meeting style is very emergent: we often allow the meeting to go places we didn’t plan. So often, we hear things the client values (or, sometimes, doesn’t!) from our meetings that we didn’t anticipate.
Listening for both the forest and the trees
Social dancing, intentional community, group campouts
Cyndi has been helping leaders, leadership teams, and organizations achieve ambitious goals for decades. Her clients are changemakers—visionaries and leaders of organizational and civic work oriented toward the greater good.
She brings deep knowledge of human development and systems change to her work as an executive coach. With a long history of leadership in the nonprofit sector, including educational systems and libraries, Cyndi knows that complex, systems-level change can happen — and is rooted in the mindsets and beliefs of leaders.
Cyndi helps people achieve meaningful results with clear purpose and strong process, resulting in lasting change. She is passionate about leadership development that centers social responsibility and women’s empowerment. In addition to being focused on C-level leadership team transformation through her work at Groupaya, Cyndi founded Colorado-based Only to Grow, a coaching and consulting business specializing in support for educational leaders and Enneagram-based team development.
Prior to coaching, Cyndi served as a senior executive at EL Education, overseeing professional learning and program materials at a national level.
People devote a great deal of their time and energy to work, especially those who are leading change. When work feels purposeful and impactful, and when synergy leads to sustainability, the world shifts and opens up. I love supporting individuals and teams in discovering what's possible.
My favorite moment at Groupaya is always the one I'm in. Every experience is marked by worthy exploration of important questions with good people doing good work.
Attuning, being endlessly curious, synthesizing
Gathering community, enjoying live music & great food, playing with bells and boats
Angela Chargois’ expertise builds from over twenty years of experience and training in business, organizational and leadership development, and executive coaching. She is a sought-after coach and facilitator with a proven track record of delivering engaging, relevant and impactful development programs to build leadership skill and capacity. Working across the leadership spectrum, Angela supports leaders and teams to hone their presence, develop their capabilities and approach, continuously adapt to the challenges and changes of business realities, and align purpose with action and results.
Her clients span the globe and include those within private sector and publicly-held firms, as well as entrepreneurs. Having been a leader within complex and mission-driven organizations herself, she has grounded, pragmatic understanding of the realities her clients face every day. Her efforts support sustainable change though both individual and systemically-oriented coaching; addressing the personal, interpersonal, and organizational dimensions of leadership and organizational life. Clients have described her approach as an effective mix of clarity, expertise, and wisdom delivered in a manner that is authentic and engaging.
Previously, Angela held management and leadership positions in large financial firms Franklin Templeton Investments, JP Morgan Chase and Capital One, where she led global, cross-functional teams in Corporate Communications and Marketing.
She earned her Bachelor’s degree from The University of Texas, her integral coaching certification from New Ventures West (2011) and is an International Coaching Federation Professional Certified Coach (PCC). She has training and certifications in NLP, Enneagram Level 1, Leadership Embodiment, Reiki Level 1 and IFS.
Angela is an avid traveler, visual artist and lifelong learner committed to personal and professional development that helps her best serve her clients and positively contribute to the world. She lives with her husband in San Francisco, California.
Eric is an executive coach who draws on twenty years of experience in the tech industry to help leaders have more impact. He helps clients gain clarity on their priorities so they can consciously place their focus and attention where they can make the biggest difference. He loves to identify and challenge mindsets and/or habits that are holding clients back from their next level of leadership. Before becoming a coach, Eric spent ten years as an engineer and product manager across several startups, before joining Google and eventually leading business strategy and operations for the Google Search Ads team as Chief of Staff for six years.
Ahmad is one of our favorite large-scale change agents. He is a leadership strategist, educator and facilitator of large-scale change initiatives, and a self-coined “serial collaborator”. Ahmad helps leaders across sectors develop the global foresight and adaptive capacity to address complex system challenges in regions, cities and communities. He is a principal at FuturePoint Leadership, director at the Urban Economy Institute and a fellow with Aspen Institute and Zero Divide Foundation.
Brooking has been a core colleague at Groupaya, working on the Health eHeart Alliance and other internal and client projects with Kristin, and is now an affiliate and learning partner in the Groupaya community. She has a rare combination of passion for both large systems change and micro level relational dynamics, and enjoys helping leaders and groups collaborate to increase impact. She currently works on environmental and food system change initiatives as an affiliate senior facilitator with Ag Innovations, and does collaboration consulting and coaching through the Emergence Collective.
Amiel Handelsman is a seasoned executive coach with 20+ years of experience helping leaders and teams navigate complexity. His clients have included college presidents, C-level business executives, and teams at every level. He specializes in helping people make clear commitments, deliver what they promise, and do all of this with more ease. Passionate about climate solutions, Amiel served on the advisory board of the Erb Institute for Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan. The author of four books and a frequent guest on podcasts, he enjoys exploring the practical benefits of integrating the Enneagram, adult development, and promise-based management. He holds a B.A. in Public Policy Studies from Duke University and an M.B.A. from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Amiel lives with his wife and two children in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Our only former Muppet maker for Sesame Street, Gwen is a coach, producer, consultant, and pioneer in the field of adult transformative play. She has applied her insights about play to the design of programs for groups ranging from life coaches to TSA security officers, from corporations to prisons, and for popular films including “What the Bleep Do We Know?!,” “The Story of Stuff,” “THRIVE,” “SPLIT.” She is currently producing her own movie, “Seriously,” about the value of play. Gwen brings fun and delight to every project, not to mention a keen and fast mind. We love her range – from playfulness to absolute profundity!
Rebecca is a core collaborator and colleague, and has enriched many Groupaya projects with both professional skill and personal charm. A self-proclaimed “collaboration ninja”, she focuses on bringing her deep training to support cutting-edge emergent processes for social impact. Her sharp design mind and ability to navigate complexity make her an outstanding consultant and facilitator, and her highly contagious enthusiasm makes her a total pleasure to work with. For us Rebecca is also a go to resource on collaborative technology, network-building, and virtual meeting space design.
Jeff is the President and Founder of CogNexus Group and the CogNexus Institute, and is a world renowned expert in wicked problems. We find Jeff endearing and deeply appreciate the eccentric brilliance he brings to every project. His understanding of how language impacts thinking, and how the way we frame questions and problems creates insight (or not) – can be quite profound. He is also a pioneer in collaborative technology, having developed early Compendium software as well as the Dialogue Mapping™ facilitation technique, a radically inclusive approach to knowledge management that allows groups to capture and make sense of unstructured knowledge.
Vanda is an executive and team coach, specializing in assisting C-level leaders and entrepreneurs. As a former CEO, she deeply understands the unique pressures and responsibilities of these senior positions. We love her for her keen insight, her compassion and her delightful sense of humor, all of which make the journey of transformation a bit easier.
Peggy Sebera, M.S. specializes in team effectiveness, leadership coaching & visioning. Her specialty lies in coaching from an integral model, assisting leaders to develop a strong sense of personal mastery and collaboration with others within their organizations.
She has worked extensively in high tech, as well as in the medical, hospitality and financial sectors. Peggy has a master’s degree in Psychology and is a certified professional coach. She knows the language and practices of small and large businesses, working with both for profit and non-profit organizations. She inspires individuals to act with greater clarity in their business practices. Peggy is a passionate artist, showing her landscape paintings in wineries and galleries in Sonoma County where she lives with her husband.