Keynote Speaker
Flourish Forward

Dr. Addie Ellis 

Session Abstract:

Flourish Forward is a liberatory leadership framework rooted in rest, reflection, and restoration. It supports individuals in leading with authenticity, wellness, and power. Flourish Forward rejects grind culture, scarcity thinking, and the internalized fear of failure that keeps us shrinking. Failure is an illusion, every experience is a teacher, not a life sentence.

 

This keynote invites us to disrupt the beliefs that confine our growth by breaking free from the stories that no longer serve us. The future is calling us to create new ways of being, thinking, and knowing. The journey forward requires us to Flourish Forward.

 
Bio:

Dr. Addie Ellis is a dynamic speaker, coach, and Amazon Best Selling Author known for her bold, #Unleashed approach to leadership, well-being, and equity. With nearly three decades of experience as an educator, consultant, and professor, Dr. Ellis is a leading voice on using introspection as a tool for social innovation and personal transformation. Her work empowers leaders, especially Black women and women of color, to pursue professional success without sacrificing joy, rest, or authenticity.

 

A trusted guide in liberatory leadership, Dr. Ellis helps individuals and institutions create cultures of belonging and sustainable change. She brings deep expertise in racial and cultural equity, strategic vision, and trauma-informed coaching to every engagement. Whether she’s helping an organization rethink retention or climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, her fearless spirit challenges people to move beyond limitations.

 

Dr. Ellis’s talks blend scholarship, storytelling, and soul—offering a rare mix of insight and inspiration. Audiences leave energized, reflective, and ready to flourish forward.

 

 

Breakout Presenter - Professional Development Track

Magnetize Your Messaging: How to Explain Coaching to Attract New Clients Faster

Mary Cravets

 

Session Abstract:

Coaching is amazing. It’s transformational. And… it can be REALLY hard to explain!

 

How do you describe the value of what you do so you're attracting new clients, instead of confusing or overwhelming people? In this session, we’ll have a frank discussion about the counter-intuitive leap you'll need to make in order to speak directly to the deepest desires of your prospective clients with the goal of developing a clear, compelling answer to the question, "What do you do?" Come ready to challenge your assumptions and make a big shift in how you're talking about your business, so you can attract the right people with ease.

Bio:

Mary Cravets is an award-winning Client Generation Expert and International Speaker who helps coaches grow their businesses without working nights and weekends.

She’s heard ALL the confusing and conflicting advice out there - so she isn’t surprised that most coaches struggle to establish a sustainable business. But she’s here to change that.

Using her methods, the majority of Mary’s clients quickly increase their income 50% or more. Clients range from the former CFO of Microsoft North America, to coaches in their first few years of business.

Mary is also a huge fan of roller coasters, obsessed with otters and proud Mom to her cat Inigo Montoya.

Breakout Presenter - Professional Development Track

AI Coaches: Yay? Nay? It's Here to Stay

Mo Lei Fong, ACC  

Session Abstract:

AI is creating a paradigm shift in the coaching profession, opening exciting possibilities while raising important questions. Can AI truly support deep reflection, goal setting, and accountability, or does it risk replacing the human connection that makes coaching transformative?

 

In this interactive session, we’ll explore the promise and pitfalls of AI in coaching. You will learn where AI can enhance your practice by streamlining operations, supporting client progress, and sparking new insights, while also examining its limitations and ethical implications. Through real-world examples, guided reflection, and small-group dialogue, participants will leave with a balanced and hopeful perspective on the future of coaching in an AI-enhanced world where technology serves rather than overshadows the heart of our profession.

Bio:

Leveraging 25+ years of experience in various industries as a tech executive, Mo’s coaching and consulting practice helps organizations and clients assess and root out destructive friction and to navigate challenges with greater agility.  Mo has experience in building effective teams, leading through crisis and change management, and providing insights through an entrepreneurial mindset. 

 

Mo is an adjunct lecturer with the Stanford Management Science and Engineering Department.  Mo is also a Harvard Business School career and executive coach.   Mo has served as the Executive Director at STVP, the Stanford Engineering Entrepreneurship Center .  Prior to STVP, Mo spent 15 years at Google as a Sr. Director  leading global teams in various functional areas including Google Technical Solutions, Financial Operations and People Operations.  She is the founder of LeiFongCoaching, LLC  and is the President and founding member of the Asian Women Coaching Collective.  Mo is ICF ACC certified and graduated from the Hudson Institute of Coaching.   Mo is an investor and advisor to social impact start-ups including Edupolaris.ai, LightUp.io, earlyday.com, and trialspark.com.  She holds a BS in Chemical Engineering and MA in Education from Stanford University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Breakout Presenter - Professional Development Track
Rethinking Negotiation

Megan Loeswick, PCC

Session Abstract:

Negotiation doesn’t have to feel like a battle of wills. In this interactive session, we’ll reframe negotiation as a collaborative conversation - one that builds trust, strengthens relationships, and leads to better outcomes for everyone involved. Designed for coaches and leaders, this session blends practical tools with real-world application to help you (and your clients) approach any "ask" with clarity and confidence.

 

You’ll learn how to prepare effectively, frame your asks in ways that invite agreement, and respond to resistance without losing connection or credibility. You’ll leave with simple strategies to turn potential pushback into genuine partnership - whether you’re negotiating a contract, a salary, or a shared vision.

Bio:

Megan Loeswick, PCC is a leadership coach, consultant, and mediator who thrives at the intersection of clarity, connection, and bold action. With deep experience supporting individuals, teams, and organizations through transition and growth, Megan brings a unique lens to her coaching where curiosity and candor create space for real transformation.

At the core of her work is a belief in the win-win-win, solutions that honor the individual, the relationship, and the broader system. Whether navigating high-stakes conversations or guiding leaders through complexity, Megan helps clients show up intentionally, negotiate with integrity, and create impact that lasts.

Megan is known for her creative, grounded approach and her ability to meet people where they are while holding a strong vision for where they’re headed. When she’s not coaching, Megan is likely enjoying a home-cooked meal with her chef husband, wandering the trails with her golden retrievers, or curating meaningful connections between people and possibilities.

 

Breakout Presenter - Professional Development Track

How to Build Internal Coaching Buy-In Without a Budget, Title, or Team

Morice Mabry, PCC

   

Session Abstract:

How do you bring coaching into an organization that doesn’t understand it and didn’t ask for it? In this powerful session, Coach Mo shares how he launched the Coaching and Career Development Unit inside the CA Department of Justice with no title, no budget, and no team. Learn how to translate coaching into language stakeholders value, spark curiosity through direct experience, and build internal champions who carry the message forward. Whether you're an internal coach, consultant, or entrepreneur, you'll walk away with practical strategies to grow coaching in resistant systems, and the inner resilience to keep going when no one’s clapping yet. This session is both a roadmap and reminder: you don’t need permission to lead change, just the courage to start.

Bio:

Morice "Coach Mo" Mabry, PCC is an executive and leadership coach who knows how to bring coaching where it’s needed most, inside the system. At the California Department of Justice, he created and led the Coaching and Career Development Unit, supporting over 900 leaders across a 5,500-person workforce. His work earned three Attorney General Awards for Excellence in just four years, driven by results like increased engagement, leadership promotions, and culture change.

Coach Mo brings the mindset of an athlete into the coaching space, focused, direct, and committed to building reps where it matters. That approach inspired The Inner Arena, his leadership conditioning framework that helps high performers develop emotional stamina, reset under pressure, and lead with conviction.

Known for his grounded presence and straight-talk style, Coach Mo coaches supervisors, managers, and executives to stop managing perceptions and start leading with purpose. He also hosts the Let’s Think About It podcast, where he explores the inner work behind leadership and the bold choices required to break through resistance.

Breakout Presenter - Personal Development Track
Mind the Culture Gap: Becoming Culturally Agile

Christina Burrows, ACC 

Session Abstract:

In today’s increasingly intercultural coaching landscape, cultural agility is no longer optional; it’s essential. This interactive session will introduce you to foundational intercultural frameworks to help foster true intercultural agility. You’ll explore the power of Perception Management to decode cultural dynamics in real-time, and learn how the Three Colors of Worldview (Honor/Shame, Innocence/Guilt, and Power/Fear) shape values, communication, and trust across cultures. Using the 12 Dimensions of Culture, you’ll gain practical tools to map cultural preferences and navigate potential tension points with clarity and empathy, expanding your intercultural awareness.

 

Through real-world scenarios, guided reflection, and interactive activities, you’ll walk away with strategies to adapt your coaching style across cultural contexts while maintaining presence and authenticity.

Bio:

Christina Burrows, ACC, is an intercultural coach, consultant, and trainer. She is a Founder of Jigsaw Coaching who helps people learn how to work well with others who are culturally different from themselves. She’s Korean, she’s British, and she’s lived in five different countries, so she’s learned the hard way that what is considered “normal” in one culture–whether that’s national, ethnic, generational, or socio-economic culture–may not be considered "normal" in another!

 

Using the Intercultural Agility approach, Christina's clients are not only empowered to define who they are as unique cultural beings, but they also learn to create new cultural spaces with others who are different from them, creating win-win solutions. Christina has degrees in Modern Languages, Education, and Theology, and is a certified practitioner of Intercultural Agility through KnowledgeWorkx in Dubai. She has worked with a diverse range of clients on six continents. Christina is also a wife and Mom to two teenage girls and a yellow Labrador Retriever, Friar Tuck.

Breakout Presenter - Personal Development Track
Befriending Uncertainty - A Somatic Workshop

Emma Pineda Fortin, ACC

 

Session Abstract:

This experiential workshop will invite you to explore your current relationship with uncertainty at a personal and collective level. Do you brace? Do you expect the worst? Do you allow for possibilities to emerge? Through the use of somatic exercises (visualization, breath, orienting), self reflection, and dialogue, you will be invited to slow down and take time to be with the world inside and outside of you just as it is - with the intention of expanding your capacity to be with that which you cannot control. Grounded in embodied presence, the session will foster deeper self-connection and collective care in times of not knowing.

Bio:

Emma holds an ACC from the International Coaching Federation, with coaching training from InviteChange and the Somatic Wilderness Institute, alongside a PhD in Biomedical Engineering. She blends her lived experience as a queer person of color, executive, and scientist with her expertise in somatics. Her unique background in tech, entrepreneurship, and somatic healing allows her to bridge the connection between mind, body, and heart.

Emma is a recurring presenter at ICF Coaching Week and the LeanIn Latinas Conference, where she shares workshops on the intersection of identity, embodiment, and self-leadership.

Emma approaches coaching with deep intuition, courage, and care. She believes that when we honor our own wisdom, we unlock greater clarity, creativity, and compassion — both for ourselves and the world around us.

Her 1:1 and group coaching is grounded in somatics, intuition, and deep listening — empowering clients to move through internalized beliefs and embody more liberated, authentic ways of navigating through the world.

Breakout Presenter - Personal Development Track

From Wounds to Wisdom: Healing Leadership from Within

Kimberly Petschen, PCC

Session Abstract:

As coaches, we've all encountered leadership clients whose challenges run deeper than skills or strategies—they stem from unhealed wounds that create cycles of fear and dysfunction. After 35 years in corporate transformation and as an ICF PCC, Kimberly Petschen discovered that most leadership failures stem from eight core spiritual wounds: Attachment to Power, Ignorance, Greed, Doubt, Anger, Projection, Jealousy, and Arrogance.

 

This transformative session offers both diagnosis and medicine for leadership that heals rather than harms. You’ll learn to identify these wounds in leadership clients, understand how trauma manifests as toxic behaviors, and discover practical coaching approaches that create lasting transformation. You’ll leave with concrete assessment tools, advanced coaching conversation frameworks, and fresh perspective on transforming "difficult" leadership clients through soul-level healing work.

Bio:

Kimberly Petschen is an ICF Professional Certified Coach with over 35 years of experience guiding transformational change in organizations, including several ranked in the top 10 of the Fortune 500. A former corporate executive turned intuitive guide and leadership healer, she blends high-performance business insight with a soulful, purpose-driven approach to growth.

 

Her work focuses on uncovering and transforming the deeper patterns that quietly shape leadership—whether they arise from lived trauma, systemic inequities, inherited beliefs, cultural conditioning, or soul-level disconnection. Kimberly helps both coaches and leaders explore what lies beneath performance, returning them to authentic presence, conscious service, and sustainable impact.

 

She is the founder of Absence of War and the healing initiative, Presents of Peace™ and holds 27 professional certifications spanning traditional and agile leadership, including SAFe SPC, Lean Portfolio Management, PMP, PMI-ACP, and somatic coaching modalities. Her book, Letters to Leaders, invites readers to address the unspoken wounds of leadership and to lead from truth rather than fear.

 

At the 2025 ICF Sacramento Annual Conference, Kimberly will present From Wounds to Wisdom: Coaching Leadership from Within, offering practical tools and soul-aligned frameworks for working confidently with even the most complex leadership challenges.

Breakout Presenter - Personal Development Track and Closing Speaker

The Coaching Lens: Transforming Reactive Moments into Powerful Connections

Maria Nemeth, PhD, MCC 

Session Abstract:

In this dynamic session, you’ll be introduced to two practical tools - The Four Boxes and the Green and Red Lenses - to help you train your attention and strengthen your coaching presence. We’ll look at how the brain draws automatic conclusions that shape what we see in others, often distorting our perception through what Dr. Nemeth calls the Red Lens. This lens, activated by stress or fatigue, can quietly erode trust and connection in our coaching relationships.

 

Using the Four Boxes, you’ll see how attention habits create self-fulfilling patterns. Then, you’ll practice shifting to the Green Lens, where Powerful Recognition allows you to see your clients as resilient, capable, and worthy of respect, regardless of circumstances. These tools will equip you to interrupt reactivity, restore presence, and build trust - moment by moment, conversation by conversation.

Bio:

Maria Nemeth, PhD, MCC, helps purpose-driven people everywhere see their greatness and bring it all to life.

 

Designed and refined over decades of work with people worldwide, her coaching methods turn timeless wisdom into practical skills that have helped tens of thousands to live and serve with clarity, focus, ease, and grace.

 

As Founder and Director of the Academy for Coaching Excellence, she has trained thousands worldwide in the nonprofit, for-profit, and governmental sectors.

 

She is a foremost expert in leadership excellence, personal/professional development, and financial empowerment, whose work has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show and Inc. Magazine.

 

Maria is the author of two highly acclaimed books: The Energy of Money, available in five languages, and its follow-up, Mastering Life’s Energies. Both have enabled people worldwide to start applying success principles in real time.

 

Host

Jeff Heiser, ACC

 

Bio:

Jeff Heiser, ACC, dedicates himself to coaching leaders in higher education to uncover their strengths, rediscover their purpose, and achieve their goals. As the Senior Trainer and Strengths Coach for the Division of Student Affairs at UC Davis, he specializes in one-on-one coaching, team coaching, and facilitating strengths-based workshops, helping leaders and teams connect and feel more engaged at work.

 

He holds a master’s degree in recreation and leisure studies with an emphasis on non-profit management. Jeff is a Gallup-certified strengths coach, an associate certified coach (ACC) with the International Coaching Federation, and a certified team coach from UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education. A regular host for our monthly chapter meetings, his love for public speaking has led him to emcee everything from professional conferences to lively campfires at summer camp.

 

Host

Katie Kanowsky, PCC

 

Bio:
Katie Kanowsky is a dynamic educator, business consultant, and focus coach. She combines her expertise as a coach and cognitive scientist to help clients find their strengths and passion, then integrates them to create the life and work they love. Her passion is to help children and teens in the public education system learn to harness this information in their formative years instead of after having chosen a life path. Her mission is to create a sustainable psychological support system within the public education system that serves all individuals at the school site, helping them grow into their unique potential. She earned her BS in Organizational Behavior and Leadership at the University of the Pacific, completed coach training through University California, Davis, and holds multiple certifications in the coaching field, including Values2Wellbeing, HeartMath, and Sovereign Mind.