Founder & CEO

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As Founder and CEO (Chief Empowerment Officer) of Mainstay Leadership, Danielle’s core purpose is to help people be empowered at work and in life. The mainstays of an empowered organization include clear vision, strong leadership, connected communication, and a trusting culture. Empowered teams have higher performance, lower turnover, and they are show up different in the world as community leaders, partners, parents, family members, and friends. 

Prior to founding Mainstay Leadership, Danielle served as Managing Partner of Leadership Advisory Services for Allen Austin where she led strategic programs such as Total Performance Leadership and Organizational Health Index for both public and private companies. She also designed and facilitated programs such as Resilient Leadership, Board of Trustees Annual Strategic Planning, and Chancellor’s Cabinet Retreats for top universities. 

Danielle previously served as Program Leader and Executive Coach at Mark Kamin & Associates, an educational company devoted to organizational transformation and creating high performing cultures. While there she helped create an innovative service offering assessing extraordinary communication, impeccable integrity, and authentic leadership. She also helped individuals and companies identify and remove their barriers to peak performance, deliver better employee and customer engagement, and accelerate strategic value creation.

Danielle spent over 12 years in the sports arena, most notably as Executive Director of the Davey O’Brien Foundation, home to the Davey O’Brien National Quarterback Award. There she revitalized all aspects of the foundation and led a turnaround that grew net assets by 370%. During her tenure, Danielle was elected President of the National College Football Awards Association. She also has extensive experience working with boards of directors and creating strategic partnerships with CBS, ESPN, FOX, Taste of the NFL, EA Sports, Big XII, Texas Rangers, The Marketing Arm, and PlainsCaptial. Additional experience includes Positive Coaching Alliance, ESPN, The Fort Worth Club, AmeriCredit, and Bank One.

Danielle received dual bachelor’s degrees in finance and management from Texas Christian University. She has completed extensive training in advanced communication, team management, and leadership through Landmark Worldwide and is also a certified Communication IQ Consultant and an accredited user of The BluePrint Toolset.

Danielle serves on the Board of Directors for the Dallas Chapter of Conscious Capitalism, bringing the principles of higher purpose, stakeholder orientation, conscious culture, and conscious leadership to the community. She was elected Chair for 2022.

Additionally, Danielle is a 200-hour certified yoga instructor and has her Advanced Open Water PADI scuba diving certification. She is a foodie and lily lover who enjoys traveling, hiking, and scuba diving with her husband, Scott.

 In today’s complicated and unpredictable work environment, it is critical to go beyond conventional approaches. We live in a world of constant change and uncertainty. To thrive an enterprise must not only be able to change but anticipate the next change. It’s a fine balance between being change ready and being change fatigued.
 

Every organization is different. How and where and how to start needs to be uniquely specific to your goals and outcomes. For some this may mean starting with mindset shifts, such as adopting a growth mindset. For others it may be examining leadership beliefs and unwritten behavioral norms that run counter to the stated values. 

Elise will guide your leaders and executives through the challenging journey of culture change with pragmatic advice, simplifying complicated research, and delivering unique solutions tailored to your enterprise, leadership, organizational maturity, and desired future state. The format ranges from individual leadership coaching, workshops, and presentations/keynotes at all hands meetings. 

Elise’s approach is informed by her strong sense of curiosity about how people think and relate to each other. An engaging communicator and presenter, Elise favors innovative approaches. She focuses on how people respond and work through change, by understanding their emotions and behaviors. Her highly collaborative style enrolls people early and ensures that they feel and see their contributions matter. Elise uses a variety of proven methods, customized to the client and situation.  

Fourteen years at Garter Inc., working with thousands of executive clients worldwide has given Elise a broad perspective and an infinite repertoire of actions that can begin to turn around the thorniest organizational challenges. Elise received two prestigious thought leadership awards – one for her research on “Living and Leading in the Brain Aware Enterprise” and “The Future of Work – Culture.” She also draws from her mix of work experience at companies such as Levi Strass, Charles Schwab, Safeway, and financial institutions. Elise is constantly staying appraised of the latest research, in areas such as neuroscience and organizational psychology.  

Elise lives in Prescott, Arizona. She has a B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. Check out Elise’s LinkedIn page for detailed work history and recommendations. 

Areas of Expertise:

· Organizational Psychology: leveraging human behavior and organizational dynamics to drive positive change and enhance organizational performance

· Leading Change: six step model for continual change, co-creating change, rewriting the leadership narrative  

· Psychological Safety: promoting trust, fostering a growth mindset, generative listening 

· The Culture Landscape: embed values in hiring, onboarding, and performance management; uncovering cultural landmines

· Identifying &  Addressing Burnout: techniques to spot, assess, neutralize and educate 

· Team Dynamics/Motivation: adoption styles, moving from push to passion 

· Communications that Speak to the Heart &  Mind: build confidence that everyone can change 

· Rethinking Leadership for a Hybrid Workplace: identifying leadership moments that matter 

· Designing the Next State: models for defining, communicating and how to get there, culture hacks, building a change-ready organization

Jackie Fenn advises executives, business leaders and entrepreneurs on how to drive innovation and nurture creativity in their organizations, how to anticipate and explore future trends and opportunities, and how to elevate their ideas and experience into world-class thought leadership that will grow their personal and professional brand.

With over 30 years of experience as an industry thought leader, analyst and advisor, Jackie has worked with thousands of companies, government organizations and not-for-profits in over 20 countries. In her role as Research Fellow and Distinguished Vice President at Gartner, she ran research teams and agendas for innovation management, culture change, emerging technologies and future trends, and engaged with clients through written research, workshops, global keynote presentations, onsite briefings, and individual coaching.

Jackie has created numerous models, frameworks and processes, including Gartner’s Customizable Innovation Framework, the STREET innovation process, and the Gartner Hype Cycle, which has been adopted by news media and other organizations worldwide to explain how technologies move from hype to disillusionment and beyond. Her book Mastering the Hype Cycle: How to Choose the Right Innovation at the Right Time was published by Harvard Business Press and selected as a CIO Magazine Top Ten Book. She is the recipient of the Gartner Thought Leadership Award. 

Jackie’s sought-after perspectives on trends and innovation have been featured in interviews and quotes in hundreds of publications and outlets, including CNN, CNBC, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, UK Telegraph, New Scientist, The Economist, CFO Magazine, CIO Magazine and the Zigzag podcast.

Outside of the business world, Jackie writes speculative fiction, sci-fi and technology thrillers. She enjoys martial arts (she holds a black belt in Tang Soo Do and currently studies Kali and Wing Chun), kayaking, hiking, making spreadsheets, and researching the mysteries of the human mind. 

Jackie lives in Sarasota, Florida. She has a BSC in Applied Language Studies from the University of Manchester. Check out  Jackie’s LinkedIn page for detailed work history and recommendations. 

Areas of Expertise:

· Visioning & Strategic Futures: anticipating and exploring future trends and opportunities, applying futures and foresight techniques, scenario planning, setting up trend tracking capability

· Innovation & Creativity: nurturing a culture of innovation, running ideation challenges, designing an innovation program or capability, increasing innovation maturity

· Thought Leadership: identifying the big idea, developing models and frameworks that drive clarity and insight, communicating to engage and inspire