FAST FORWARD GROUP - Key Persons
Adam is a Fast Forward coach who works with senior executives to create a powerful vision and strengthen their leadership skills. With clients like Amazon, Dell, and Peloton, Adam specializes in leadership development and creating a "winning culture". He is especially skilled in working with leaders to understand and build their capabilities in the areas of emotional intelligence, team dynamics and powerful communication. He has a style that resonates with senior level executives, successfully helping them to own their leadership presence and improve their business results.
Job Titles:
- Coach
- Instructor
- Executive Coach With the
Alison is an executive coach with The Fast Forward Group, who partners with individuals and teams at high growth fast-paced companies, to systematically and holistically unleash their personal & professional potential.
With a passion for supporting people's health and wellness goals, Alison is a dedicated instructor of yoga and mindfulness meditation in which she leads retreats and workshops.
Job Titles:
- Coach
- Executive Coach With the
Andy is an executive coach with The Fast Forward Group. He is an optimist who helps startup founders and technology execs in Asia scale their companies, teams, and themselves. His passion for coaching and guiding people to fulfill their ambition comes from his own experience of having an executive coach and seeing firsthand how coaching helped him to become a more authentic leader.
Anne Benveniste is an executive coach with The Fast Forward Group where she helps ambitious people move past limiting beliefs, hone their leadership skills, and create energizing careers and lives they love. Anne believes that the formula for success starts with letting go of external expectations and instead, owning who you are and what matters to you. It takes less energy to be yourself, so when you use yourself as the North Star in your career, this is when you can really thrive and create incredible impact. Anne's clients learn to reconnect to themselves, embrace discomfort, and take ownership of their mindset to achieve their boldest goals and vision.
Anne built her career in marketing and advertising between New York and London working on brands large and small in industries like beauty, sports, alcohol, and tech. Highlights included two years at the multi-championship-winning English soccer team Chelsea Football Club and running the team that created the UK's ‘Ad of the Year' with Jeff Goldblum.
As founder of The Career Studio Anne also helps clients create careers that are simply an extension of who they are and how they want to spend their time on this planet.
Anne is certified as a coach through the Co-Active Training Institute and The Life Coach School and earned her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and her MBA at INSEAD.
Anne lives in Brooklyn, NY. When she's not coaching, she's listening to as much music as she can fit into the 16 hours she's awake every day.
Job Titles:
- Coach
- Executive Coach With the
Carla is an executive coach with The Fast Forward Group and a High Performance coach for thoughtful & ambitious leaders, executives, and entrepreneurs. Her specialty is supporting empathic leaders to overcome overthinking, overgiving, and overwhelm to step into more confidence and higher performance.
Carrie is a Fast Forward coach with over a decade of experience in leadership and executive coaching and consulting. She works with leaders, emerging leaders, and teams to create a vision, mindset, and leadership skills that increase impact and leave a lasting legacy. Carrie specializes in leadership development in high-stress, high-stakes situations, and her areas of focus include; goal setting and achievement, stress reduction, mindset, emotional intelligence, executive presence, value alignment, systems thinking, and power dynamics.
Carrie is a PCC (Professional Certified Coach) with the ICF (International Coach Federation) and is the 2022 President for the ICF Los Angeles Chapter. She has an evidence-based coaching certification from Fielding Graduate University and an MA in Organizational Leadership from Gonzaga University.
Carrie is based in Los Angeles where she lives with her husband and cat. She loves to travel and has visited over 25 countries. She is also a self-taught foodie and oenophile and has a podcast about wine and food pairing.
Job Titles:
- Coach
- Executive
- Certified Coach
Claire Jung is an executive coach with The Fast Forward Group. Her sense of adventure has driven her to constantly challenge her limits in a banking career which spans almost two decades. She has held a variety of regional management roles across compliance, learning & development, employee relations, and leadership coaching.
Claire was the Lead Coach and Performance Excellence Consultant for Asia Pacific at The Royal Bank of Scotland plc (RBS) responsible for implementing the bank's global leadership program in Asia, and supported leaders to develop leadership excellence and build high-performing teams. Prior to this, Claire was Head of Compliance for RBS Hong Kong and has also worked at Bank of America, Macquarie Bank, Morgan Stanley, and the London Stock Exchange.
As a Brit living in Hong Kong with her Korean husband and two, third-culture children, Claire knows that an ability to understand and shape our habits allows us to thrive in diverse environments. She helps technical experts become great leaders through raising self-awareness and embedding leadership habits so that they become more fulfilled and have more impact in their organizations.
No matter who she is working with, her approach is guided by three beliefs; the power of habit; happiness in life leads to success at work, and real change involves discomfort.
Claire is a Certified Coach (ICF PCC), a Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) practitioner, a Workplace Big 5 practitioner, trained in Cohen Brown Sports Coaching for Business and trained in Positive Intelligence and Mental Fitness. She has coached and facilitated training for executives at RBS, Morgan Stanley, MUFG, Freshfields, Credit Suisse, Linklaters, Mayer Brown, Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Black Sheep Restaurants, Schindler, Sasa, Hilton Hotels, and Medidata, among other multinational companies.
Job Titles:
- Director of Marketing
- Marketing Director
Courtney is the marketing director of the Fast Forward Group. She is responsible for planning and executing all branding, marketing and communication initiatives to position Fast Forward as a leading company in the training and executive coaching space.
She is passionate about the power of storytelling, and she enjoys building strategies to connect mission-driven companies with their ideal customers and future fans. Her more than 15 years of marketing experience includes leadership roles in the B2B and B2C space. In addition to her work as a marketing leader, she also served as an adjunct faculty member in the communication department at the University of Central Missouri.
She has won two PRSA PRISM Gold awards and a KCDMA AMBIT award for her marketing campaigns, as well as numerous higher education marketing awards. She earned her bachelor's in journalism from the University of Missouri and her master's degree from the University of Central Missouri. She lives outside Kansas City with her husband, Asa, their two cats, and her dressage horse, Brazil.
Job Titles:
- Client Engagement Manager
Job Titles:
- Executive Vice President, Head of Faculty / the
Debbie coaches leaders to achieve their full potential professionally and personally. She helps them determine what "extraordinary" looks like for them so they can accomplish more of what's important to them and be who they have always wanted to be. Working with Debbie, people gain insight into the behaviors and mindsets that have held them back. Clients take on new behaviors and habits that lead them to lasting breakthrough. Debbie has led programs and coached executives from Facebook, Google, iHeartMedia, NBC, AOL, Amazon, Disney, Aon and more.
Debbie brings 20 years of experience as a high performing advertising sales and marketing executive at media brands including Food & Wine and Maxim. She is known for her commitment and passion for understanding her clients' needs, and helping them to grow their business. Throughout her career, she became a trusted advisor to her clients and a valued coach to her peers. During her decade at Food & Wine, she was their top performer leveraging print, digital, social and the country's most renowned food and wine festivals.
Prior to sales, Debbie worked in account management at Ogilvy & Mather and DDB Needham for clients including American Express, Hershey, Bermuda Department of Tourism and Outward Bound. Debbie is a graduate of Georgetown University with a Bachelor of Arts in Government. She lives in Monmouth Beach, NJ with her husband and three children.
Job Titles:
- Facilitator, Fast Forward Coach
Dee is an executive coach for The Fast Forward Group. She has a master's degree in Instructional Design which she uses to help people design solutions and create roadmaps toward their version of success. One of Dee's gifts is the ability to see the best qualities in each client she meets. Sharing these insights with clients tends to build confidence and subsequently improve productivity. Her natural ability to connect with people makes each engagement fun and inspiring while she guides them toward maximizing their potential.
Job Titles:
- Client Engagement Manager
- Manager of Client Engagement
Erin Reynoldson is a Client Engagement Manager at The Fast Forward Group. She is responsible for end-to-end program management and ensuring the principles and tools we teach become the new normal for clients.
Prior to joining the Fast Forward team, Erin worked in account and project management at top creative agencies (including Anomaly, Ad Age 2017 Agency of the Year) building strong client relationships and leading the execution of dozens of global campaigns for brands like Google, Diageo, HP, Red Bull, Adidas and Converse.
Working with some of the major players in business today piqued Erin's interest in how companies invest in the development and overall well being of their people, and how these dynamics have a direct impact on business growth, productivity and culture. Erin brings her passion for positive psychology to her role at Fast Forward, continually bringing the latest research and insights to the Fast Forward curriculum.
Originally from the Midwest, Erin currently lives in New York City. She thrives on travel, writing and exploring new hobbies, and is on a never-ending quest to find the perfect New York slice.
Fred Bunsa is a Fast Forward Coach who is adept at asking the questions and cultivating the conversations that will inspire you to see clearly, choose wisely, and act boldly. And in the process, you will develop new energy for how to leverage your superpowers - that unique combination of gifts, talents, skills, and values you offer - to accomplish your Bold Vision.
Tapping into the learning powers of story, appreciative inquiry, and fun, Fred is skilled at navigating the creative tension of focusing you on your longer-term leadership development goals while also remaining "at the moment" enough to be your thought partner on demanding business issues that arise during your coaching engagement. That tension is an amazingly creative place to learn and grow.
Two particular sweet spots have emerged for Fred in his work: helping technically oriented leaders expand their repertoire to include greater EQ and more compelling messaging in order to influence a wider audience, as well as facilitating experiential learning both in person and virtually.
Fred took an unorthodox path into Leadership Development and the Human Capital space he has been working in since 1999. Prior to that "hat over the wall" moment, he worked 12 years in various levels of Sales roles within Financial Services - which to this day helps to balance his love for a good leadership model with the compulsion to deliver tangible takeaways for clients who have important work that needs to get done. As a certified Executive Coach and a Facilitator, Fred has had the opportunity to apply his experience at some iconic global brands, including Novartis, Facebook (Meta), Avis Budget, Deloitte, and Google - as well as at many great US companies, including United Healthcare Group, Affinity Credit Union and SmartCare.
Beyond his work, Fred has a few other simple loves in life (in no particular order): his high school girlfriend; trying to coach his 7 children without them realizing it; running long distances; singing along to great music in the car; asking probing questions; public speaking; words of affirmation; prayer.
Job Titles:
- Coach
- Managing Partner of ClearWater Performance Group
Gayle is a Fast Forward coach with 28 years of executive coaching and management consulting experience across business sectors, including media, financial, health, retail, live entertainment, consumer goods, digital, and nonprofit organizations. Gayle delivers results-driven coaching that focuses on leadership development, team alignment for improved performance, communication effectiveness, and new leadership on-boarding.
Gayle is also a Managing Partner of ClearWater Performance Group, a performance acceleration firm, where her clients there include: American Express, Capital One, ING, Time Warner Cable, Avis Budget Group and National Public Radio.
Giancarlo is a Fast Forward coach, who helps executives become focused in the digital age, and find balance in their use of habit-forming technology. His work has been covered by Harvard Business Review and his programs have been sought out by teams from The World Economic Forum, Spotify, Facebook, NYC Department of Education, WeWork, Kate Spade/Coach, Common Sense Media, and more.
Job Titles:
- Coach
- Facilitator, Fast Forward Coach
- Founding Partner of ClearWater Performance Group
Heather is a Fast Forward coach with 20 years experience in executive coaching, business and sales strategy, and team development. Her coaching addresses both individual and organizational needs in areas of focus including: leadership development, presentation skills and communication, executive presence, accelerating culture change, improving recruitment practices, overcoming team dysfunctions, executing business strategy, on-boarding new leadership, and succession planning.
Heather is also a Founding Partner of ClearWater Performance Group, a performance acceleration firm, where her clients include: American Express, Capital One, ING, Time Warner Cable, Avis Budget Group and National Public Radio.
Ida Chacon is a seasoned marketing professional and facilitator with the Fast Forward Group. She brings a depth of experience to coach leaders to achieve their full potential in work and life. She helps clients envision extraordinary success and set out a plan to get there. Her rigorous and empathetic approach helps people achieve more than they ever believed possible.
Ida possesses more than 20 years of experience in consulting, brand management, and multicultural marketing. She worked at Procter & Gamble (P&G) where among other things she led their Multicultural Center of Expertise, training and enabling business units, setting forth the company's multicultural strategy and managing creative advertising agency relationships. Ida is known for providing solutions that deliver value amongst the brands and companies that she works with but also for creating deep and meaningful relationships with those she works with.
Ida is an engaging and experienced facilitator and speaker, working in both Spanish and English. She has given talks across the US about a variety of topics. In whatever she does, she adds her Puerto Rican flair and experiences as a mother of two to help clients understand and connect with the topics at hand.
Ida holds a B.A. from the University of Puerto Rico and an M.B.A. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Irena is a Fast Forward coach for ambitious professionals, committed to leading with excellence while living more expansive, courageous, and authentic lives. An executive coach for a decade, she has focused on seeing in people what they cannot see, on supporting them to find and use their strengths, in order to use their potentials and to adopt a new mindset and new behaviors so as to embrace and live their next versions of themselves. Irena uses a holistic approach and coaches the whole person using NLP, female empowerment tools (for women), and many other coaching approaches to get the vision of the client to come through.
Job Titles:
- Facilitator, Fast Forward Coach
Job Titles:
- Head of Client Development
Jeff Jackson spent the last decade in senior business development and program design roles within the leadership and people development industry. As the Co-Founder of Experience to Lead, he's partnered with Fortune 100 senior executives and high potentials on immersive, global experiences. Previously, Jeff worked as the Executive Director of Leadership & Experiential Programs for The Conference Board, Inc. He was responsible for the delivery of customized executive and C-level leadership and best practice programs. He's held senior leadership, program and business development positions at Dale Carnegie and ID:ology, a UK-based leadership consultancy. Jeff has also held senior marketing and sales positions with Atlantic Records. Jeff lives in Port Washington, New York with his wife of 25+ years and his two teenage children.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director, Client Engagement
- Client Engagement Manager
- Manager, Client Engagement
Jillian Ochsman (formerly Catoe) is a Client Engagement Manager at Fast Forward Group. She is responsible for end-to-end program management and ensuring the principles and tools we teach become the new normal for clients.
Prior to joining Fast Forward, Jillian worked in digital media, immersing herself in the psychology of consumer communication from all angles - social connection, digital advertising, political persuasion and curriculum development. Most recently, she was a senior leader on the Planning and Strategy team at Undertone, where she pioneered her team's training and leadership development program. She was awarded the company's Undertony award for embodying excellence in quality, customer relations, execution, teamwork and innovation.
Jillian's passion for human connection, team building and communication took root during her university years at The University of Vermont in Communication Sciences and Disorders. She continues to be fascinated by how we miscommunicate, specifically in the workplace, and the impact this has on team and company culture.
A lover of water and competition, Jillian was an All-American Division I swimmer, team captain and swim coach. She still swims in her free time and lives in Charlottesville, VA with her husband and her puppy, Romeo.
Job Titles:
- Coach
- Executive Coach With the
Jo Anne is an executive coach with The Fast Forward Group. Whether she works with individuals or teams, Jo Anne is committed to helping her clients crystallize the values and insights that drive motivation and accelerate change. Her clients know her to be a rapt listener, a deep questioner, and a bold enthusiast with a well-honed ability to frame strategies and approaches - and to re frame the boundaries around what's possible. Jo Anne is endlessly curious about who people are, what matters most to them, and how they can tap into the mindsets and behaviors that bring their goals to life.
Jo Olsen is an Executive Coach with the Fast Forward Group. She specializes in enabling leaders and rising executives to fulfill their potential and unleash their inner magnificence in all aspects of their work and personal lives.
Having spent 20+ years in People and Talent Development, and holding board-level positions for over a decade, Jo is a seasoned leadership specialist experienced in creating high-performance cultures, so individuals can thrive and perform at their best.
Joanna Catalano is an Executive Coach with The Fast Forward Group. She has significant leadership experience in growing and scaling businesses, building customer relationships, and leading multidisciplinary teams. She acquired a depth of expertise in commercial and digital transformation, M&A, bespoke digital product development, and services delivery, while working cross-culturally in America, EMEA, and APAC.
Joanna commenced her career in economic development partnering with the Ukrainian government on market reform education and micro-lending for female start-ups, as Ukraine transitioned to a capitalist economy. Witnessing disruption at such a significant scale piqued a curiosity both in human and systemic behavior and change that has since guided her professional journey. Over the last 20 years, she's gathered a holistic view of B2C and B2B businesses, having spent time working brand-side (American Express, Starwood Hotels), for technology platforms (Google) and software businesses (Travelport, Piano.io), as well as leading services businesses (PwC, iProspect).
Joanna's coaching work has centered around three areas: leadership (specifically change and adaptive) and management, high performance (focus on teams), and diversity and inclusion. Her previous clients describe her as warm, empathetic, insightful, creative, and working with care. She has coached in both the corporate and public sectors, including Google, Rakuten, Intel, The British Army, and UNESCO.
Since a young age, she has been motivated by a commitment to a lifelong understanding and unfolding of self to live a fulfilling life. For the last 30+ years, she has been a people leader (as a student, mom, professionally, and in her communities); for Joanna, the most important aspect of this responsibility is helping those with whom she works to be their most fulfilled selves, as they define it. She is drawn towards the power of coaching in organizational transformation and towards millennials, as the generation stepping into power and leadership roles, given the unique characteristics of this generation - the significant differences from what's come before for them, what's happening in our world now, and what's to follow.
Based in Amsterdam, Joanna holds an MBA in Finance and International Business from NYU Stern. Her coaching certification is the New Ventures West (ICF accredited) and she's deepened her capabilities working with Aletheia and Neuropower Group. In addition to coaching, she contributes through board advisory and mentorship of both start-up and social impact businesses.
Joe Gibbons is an executive coach with The Fast Forward Group. As an organizational development executive and practitioner with extensive internal and external global consulting experience, he focuses on accelerating leadership excellence and organizational transformation.
Joe approaches organizations holistically; aligning teams and individuals, developing strategies, ensuring organizational and individual competency, driving change, designing interventions, and instituting performance metrics. With practical business experience and a research-based background, Joe puts theory into practice.
Joe partners with senior leaders and teams to identify opportunities for growth, lead transformational change, and drive business results. His specialties include Executive Coaching and Consulting, Leadership & Professional Development, Executive Assessment & Development, Team Effectiveness, Action Learning, Innovation Management, Strategic Goal and Performance Alignment, Organizational Assessment and Design, Change Leadership, and Employee Engagement.
Joe's coaching certifications include ATD Expert Coach Program, Leadership Coaching Training, Washington, DC, Kegan & Lahey's Immunity to Change Process - Certified Coach / Facilitator, Cambridge, MA, MBTI | Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Certified Consultant / Instructor, Los Angeles, CA and KRW Return on Character Methodology - Certified Consultant, Paris, France
Joe has worked with a broad range of clients including HSBC, Samsung, BWF Consulting, Draeger Medical, Foundation Medicine, Inc. and Science37
Prior to coaching, Joe held senior leadership roles at Deloitte, Covidien/Medtronic, Nuance, Fresenius, and IBM.
Joy Poole is a Fast Forward coach who helps leaders to identify, articulate and GET what they truly want out of their careers and lives. In order to achieve this, Joy guides clients to use their own curiosity to gain clarity on their values and whole life vision, to remove barriers, and to identify opportunities and plans to pursue their BIG goals and dreams.
Throughout her 20 years in tech, consulting, sales, and executive leadership, Joy has developed a deep conviction that success comes when we are clear and bold in our goals, but focused and curious (rather than fearful) in the process. This belief has led her to speak and write extensively on related topics including Exponential vs Incremental Thinking, Techposter Syndrome™, and utilizing curiosity to overcome your inner critic.
Joy is trained in coaching by the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching and is a practitioner of the Energy Leadership Index. She holds a bachelor's degree from Michigan State University and Executive Programme certificates from the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics.
Besides coaching, speaking and entrepreneuring, other activities that fill Joy up include pilates, running, travel and generally trying new things as much as possible. Joy, her husband, and their 5-year-old son call London home.
Job Titles:
- Facilitator, Fast Forward Coach
Karen Lum is an Executive Coach with the Fast Forward Group. A legacy building expert, Karen challenges her clients to think about every interaction having a positive, lasting impact.
Kathy is a Fast Forward coach who stimulates leaders to access their potential, build their confidence and expand their creativity. She is passionate about helping leaders and teams expand their abilities to communicate with more power and clarity, manage conflict and improve performance.
Job Titles:
- Coach
- Executive Coach With the
Katie is an executive coach with The Fast Forward Group who brings more than twenty-five years of experience to executive coaching. She has contributed to the success of a long list of leaders by leveraging coaching and counseling skills, science-backed assessment tools, and business acumen. Katie is one of an elite group of coaches certified at the Professional Coach level by the International Coaching Federation. Katie also a holds a Masters' Degree in Social Work and Business Administration.
Prior to becoming an executive coach, Katie worked as a therapist at Louisiana State University's Mental Health Center. For more than 12 years she owned and operated successful strategic planning consulting firm. Katie began her career with the Estee Lauder Companies, in New York City, last serving as Worldwide Marketing Manager for Origins Natural Resources.
Job Titles:
- CEO
- Co - Founder
- Co - Founders
Fast Forward co-founders Lisa McCarthy and Wendy Leshgold spent decades in corporate America. They've experienced the pace, pressure, uncertainty and rapid change. They saw first hand the toll this could take on people: being reactive, risk averse and putting their personal life on hold. They believed it didn't have to be this way - that it is possible to be successful both personally and professionally. They developed a simple, practical program that takes a unique whole life approach. It inspires people to dramatically expand what they see as possible, change limiting mindsets, and go after their goals and dreams with intention and discipline. People-first leaders around the world are using Fast Forward to ignite their business and culture.
Job Titles:
- VP, Client Engagement & Operations / Fast Forward Coach
Job Titles:
- Facilitator, Fast Forward Coach
Job Titles:
- Manager, Business and Coaching Operations
Job Titles:
- Facilitator, Fast Forward Coach
Job Titles:
- Client Engagement Coordinator