August 26, 2021 07:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time

FOSTER CITY, Calif. – Sounding Board, Inc., the premiere virtual leadership development platform powering the enterprise coaching revolution, today announced the expansion of its leadership team with the appointments of industry experts Ron Buell as Vice President of Engineering and Niall MacGearailt, as Senior Vice President of Finance. 

Demand for leadership coaching has skyrocketed since the global pandemic and the rapid shift to a remote workforce. Sounding Board has been growing to meet demand, with seamless, customized enterprise-first solutions to unify coaching management, aggregate data across programs and provide actionable insights for measurable business outcomes. 

Leading HR technology analyst John Sumser of HRExaminer shared, “Of all of the functions performed in an organization, coaching for effective performance has been limited by the historic factors geography, cost, schedule, and the idea that such a precious resource should be used by the most senior people. Sounding Board shreds the idea and delivers an affordable, accessible tool for performance improvement across the organization. Imagine what you could do if your critical team members had access to the very best in coaching tailored to their specific needs. It’s about time that the whole organization enjoyed the benefits of this feedback loop.”

As a result, in the seven months since its Series A, which coincided with the pandemic, Sounding Board exceeded revenue projections, doubled company headcount to keep pace with new and existing customer growth, and increased the global footprint and size of its unparalleled managed coach network heralded as the industry gold standard for excellence. In addition, Sounding Board just released a definitive industry research report on leadership coaching for 2021 that is quickly becoming a roadmap for enterprise HR leaders.

“New labor models and the intense need to develop leadership pipelines are fueling the investment in Sounding Board’s technology, which enables organizations to develop the most impactful leaders for today’s rapidly changing business environments,” said Christine Tao, co-founder and CEO of Sounding Board. “As a result, we have hired two innovative leaders to further solidify our company’s stature as the most comprehensive and personalized platform to coach leaders for business impact.”

New hires Ron Buell and Niall MacGearailt join the existing leadership team featuring co-founders Christine Tao, CEO, Lori Mazan, President & Chief Coaching Officer, Piyush Gupta, Chief Product Officer and Tommy Perkins, Vice President, Sales.

Ron Buell, an accomplished software professional with extensive experience in leadership, software engineering, project management, and product management, has led the development of highly scalable systems and applications across a variety of technologies for companies including OpenFeint (acquired by GREE), Rdio (acquired by Pandora), Lyris Technologies, and Lotus/IBM Software Group. In his new role at Sounding Board, Buell will be responsible for all engineering efforts in developing, deploying, and maintaining the enterprise software platform and team for the company.

Niall MacGearailt will lead Sounding Board’s finance division, having earned a solid track record of improving P&L and operational expense management for leading companies such as Whirlpool, Logitech, Avaya and most recently Soraa, where he prepared the business for acquisition by leading hi-tech lighting company, Ecosense. In his new role, he will be responsible for building and leading the finance & relevant operations functions for the company.

Lori Mazan, co-founder, President and Chief Coaching Officer of Sounding Board, concluded, “Even before the pandemic, interest in leadership development was on the rise. What we were able to quickly do during Covid-19 was show enterprise companies the impact that coaching can have on employees at all levels of an organization. Through our managed network of highly engaged leadership coaches providing a personalized coaching experience, our customers knew they could count on us to support and focus their employees on business outcomes, ROI, and moving the needle as they fulfilled their organizational goals.”

About Sounding Board

Sounding Board disrupted a decades-long and staid coaching business model that was costly and reserved to senior executives.  With the goal of democratizing access to coaching globally, Sounding Board was one of the first to market with a virtual 1:1 coaching program that achieved the economics necessary to expand access to leadership coaching throughout an organization with a specific focus on sustainable leadership capabilities that tie directly to business impact.  Sounding Board’s best-in-class coach network covers over 60 countries and 15+ languages around the globe. In 2021, Sounding Board was named one of 2021’s Most Transformational Growth Companies in Digital Learning and a GOLD GLOBEE® WINNER for Career and Workforce Readiness Solution. For more information, please contact press@soundingboardinc.com.