Business background

As owner of The Learner’s Edge LLC, I have been coaching leadership, communication, students, and career decisions for decades, guiding others to realize their potential and increase their influence. With a network of experts in organization development, we specialize in interpersonal communication, presentation skills, executive/management coaching and career decision-making. For over 30 years, I helped facilitate rapid and successful change for clients, individually and in teams. I am also a Senior Partner with Elevation Leadership Partners Coaching & Consulting Group.

As a Coach since 1988, a Master Certified Coach with the International Coach Federation since 2000, my coaching skills and experience help guide Leadership Development, Communication, Influence and Career Decisions. As an Executive & Leadership Coach, I work with a collective of coaching and consultants - Elevation Leadership Partners. We are all NLP trained and are strong in creating change for individuals and groups. Prior to coaching, I taught and certified NLP Practitioners for 5 years in Atlanta and Dallas as I am a Certified NLP Trainer.

I am certified with the Global Team Coaching Institute (EMCC) to facilitate coaching for entire teams, not with leaders alone. This is a strong trend and will benefit companies working face to face or virtually. This methodology is not new to me, and team coaching has long needed to be formalized for coaches.

My expertise in how people learn and communicate enables me to cut short the time it takes people to capitalize new approaches to situations that may be delaying their personal or organizational development. Often, it simply takes helping you get unstuck.

In 2005, I was recruited by a leading semiconductor company, Tokyo Electron US Holdings, seeking my expertise in Organization Development, Coaching and Facilitation skills. Our team moved the organization from a technically focused culture to a leadership development culture where learning was supported from the highest level. After conducting an organizational capability review, we implemented a robust Talent Management process and integrated Values and Competencies into Learning & Development, Performance Management and critical Succession Planning process. We also implemented 360 degree feedback in leadership development.

As a life-long entrepreneur, I developed The Horse Course US, an experiential team-building and leadership experience using horses. You can raise your leadership and self-awareness interacting with horses! I am passionate about making learning experiences fun and rewarding with individuals, groups and teams. A little information in a video: https://youtu.be/wOfdLp59BhM

Consulting expertise 

• Interpersonal Relationship Coaching

• Leadership Development

• Train the Trainer

• Career Planning and Decision-making

• Executive Management and Assessments

• Management Team Building

• Communication Effectiveness

Where it began

At 14, I decided to be a psychologist to try to figure out why my brother could make all A’s and I couldn’t even pass everything. (Coaching didn’t exist at that time!) After several early jobs, I realized I wasn’t following my “chosen career” when I was younger.  So, I went to a therapist to try to get up the courage to get my Master’s Degree. At the time, the Therapist was learning a model of how the mind works and in our therapy groups, I saw and heard people having successes! Moving past long held blocks! I could too! (I thought!)

Learning How to learn

Then I joined that learning path and became a trainer of NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP) while I enrolled in the Master's Degree program. P.S. I also made all A’s!

The psychiatrist and social worker, with whom I shared an office, didn’t want to deal with students being brought to be “straightened out”, “learn to buckle down”, etc. I wanted a “practice” and felt I could share what I’d learned for myself in NLP. 

The rest is “history” as they say. I spoke to teachers, principals and parents who began to send more students to me, I was invited to National and International conferences to share my work, and I wrote 13 articles for an NLP Journal that brought more interest to what was actually working!!

Education

Diane is a graduate of the University of Houston and Montclair University Graduate School with a Masters degree in Psychology. She is a Master Certified Coach with the International Coach Federation and has served as adjunct faculty in the Business School of Southwest Texas State University, St. Edward's University for Business Communication, and in Human Resource and Organization Development for over 10 years.