The vision of Sounding Board started with one high potential leader – a sales executive at Tapjoy named Christine Tao, who grew as fast as her company did. With a business degree at Berkeley, and an MBA at Wharton, Christine earned the best education but had never been taught the leadership skills to drive teams and business growth. Enter Lori Mazan, an executive coach who had earned a successful track record over 25 years building the leadership capabilities of Fortune 500 CEOs and the C-Suite of public and private companies. “Lori came to Tapjoy to coach our CEO, then coached me when I got promoted into the executive management team,” says Tao.
By up-leveling Christine’s leadership mindsets and practices to drive long-term behavior and actions, Lori’s coaching resulted in Christine having a greater organizational impact on business growth.
As Christine quickly climbed the corporate ladder in such a fast-growing startup, she realized how much impact her leadership coaching was having on her performance and business impact . Over Lori’s long career as an executive coach for C-level execs, the common lament she often heard was “I wish I had access to coaching when I was younger… I would have been so much more effective”. They shared a vision to make coaching accessible to leaders at all levels of the organization and how to break through the high-cost barriers that had made it impossible in the past. Their methodology of disrupting the coaching industry by moving to a cloud-based virtual platform was the basis for forming Sounding Board with the goal of democratizing coaching across the enterprise.
From vision to execution, Sounding Board’s level of technical innovation, “best-in-class” platform and coach management sets the industry standard for leadership coaching at scale.
Listen deeply • Assume positive intent • Clear assumptions • Be open and receptive to other perspectives
Show up • Share your time generously • Invest in what matters • Make meaningful connections
Be willing to try new things • It’s ok to fail and be wrong • Stretch your range • Be vulnerable to build trust
Be open to feedback from others • Judgements can wait -- postpone judgement to stay open to new information • Commit to working through conflict
Innovate • Bring creativity • Think outside the box • Engage in personal and professional growth • Fail and learn
Collaborate to get things done • Work hard on behalf of the team/company • Create results through relationship
Co- Founder, CEO Sounding Board, Inc.
Co-Founder, Chief Coaching Officer Sounding Board, Inc.
General Partner Canaan Partners
Co-Founder and Managing Director JAZZ Venture Partners
David Blake
Founder & Chairman Degreed
Former CEO Nevro
Bob Huynh
VP Talent Clover Health (5X Head of People)
Former CEO - Udemy & Ebates
Former CEO of Novoed
CLO - Medtronic
CEO & CTO Astound.ai
SVP, Bus Dev Udemy
PartnerBonfire Ventures
Founding Executive Director Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics
Global Head of Employee Experience, Morningstar
Senior Vice PresidentGuild Education
Niall MacGearailt
Ron Buell
Piyush Gupta
Piyush Gupta is Chief Product Officer at Sounding Board and champions the voice of customers and users with deep empathy. Piyush envisions Sounding Board to be the first window of coaching experience for professionals and leaders worldwide. His approach is deeply rooted in proven scientific research, modeling human behaviors, and data-informed insights to deliver mindset shifts and desired business outcomes for organizations at scale. He believes that a world-class UX is key to drive simplicity that will lead to millions of professionals to access coaching for their development.
Piyush co-invented the world’s first ‘landmark intelligent driving directions’ technology that led Google to redesign their routing algorithms for the Asian markets. For the next decade, he led two disruptive FinTech companies to the market leadership positions and delivered two award-winning products that serve more than 70 million users worldwide. His teams filed 20+ patents while he himself authored three patents. He is an active startup investor and advises selected AI-driven startups on business and product strategy. He is the recipient of the World Summit Award, one of the most prestigious international honors for product innovators. In addition, he is a James Swartz fellow, the most prestigious fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University funded by the founder of the iconic venture firm, Accel Partners.
Piyush holds an MS in Software Management from Carnegie Mellon University.
Tommy Perkins
Tommy is at his best helping clients think through complex challenges in order to create a positive impact on their organizations. He thrives when interacting with others whether helping his team succeed or working with clients to build long-term partnerships. He has extensive experience consulting with organizations on driving their employee experience, guiding organizations through change, and working to ensure organizations are moving the needle when it comes to their results.
Most recently, Tommy was a Client Services Leader overseeing some of GP’s most prized accounts on a global level. His responsibilities included overall client growth strategy, retention, and satisfaction. He represented all of GP Strategies’ major business lines including leadership, coaching, and engagement, digital transformation, outsourced services, and technology implementation solutions.
Before GP Strategies, Tommy spent several years with TTEC Digital (formerly rogenSI) where he led the sales team, eventually becoming the regional Learning & Performance practice leader for North America. While managing the P&L and sales team he also led the largest global relationship for the firm (Deloitte Globally). During his time at TTEC, he focused on delivering blended learning solutions that incorporate technology and hands-on training. Before TTEC Digital, he spent several years dedicated to strength-based leadership disrupting the business landscape regarding performance management and employee engagement with thought leader Marcus Buckingham at The Marcus Buckingham Company / TMBC (now ADP).
Tommy has had the privilege of working with some of the most well-known global brands in professional services, retail, technology, and healthcare including Deloitte, Facebook, Microsoft, Bank of America, Novartis, Gap Inc., lululemon, and Intel. Several projects he led for Deloitte were Global GNPS, New Partner Pivot, NextGen Partner Program Deloitte China, Present to Win, the RPM project on performance management, and Unconscious Bias.
Tommy holds a BS in Health Sciences from Texas A&M University, and an MBA from Universidad del CEMA.
From leading remote workforces, building productive teams, to improving diversity, equity, and inclusion, Sounding Board has virtual and scalable enterprise solutions that are urgently required to adapt to rapidly changing workplace environments.
Our expert coaches combine top notch coaching, business acumen and organizational savvy to truly become your leadership “Sounding Board”. Sounding Board coaches are all industry certified and strongly vetted going through a 3 step qualification process and receiving ongoing supervision and development.
Lori Mazan
Christine Tao
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