Announcing Series B Investment

We Develop the World’s Most Impactful Leaders

Sounding Board is the industry leader in scalable leadership coaching, with the world’s first customizable leadership coaching platform that combines technology and coaching to drive measurable business impact.
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Series B 1

Series B Investment
Press Release

A vision of scaling leadership coaching to all levels in a way that is impactful and measurable.

Series B 2

A Letter from Our
Co-Founders

Today, we’re proud to share that Sounding Board, Inc has raised $30M in Series B funding!

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More Information About Sounding Board

From day one our vision at Sounding Board has been to develop the world’s most impactful leaders.

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Background on Some of Our Great Investors!

Supporting our vision of becoming the coaching enablement platform for the world’s largest enterprises.

More About Sounding Board

Sounding Board, Inc is a scalable leadership development platform, combining technology and coaching to drive business impact for global enterprises. Sounding Board offers both 1:1 and group coaching virtually through an industry-leading Coaching Management System (CMS) designed to lift administrative burden and make coaching manageable, measurable, and scalable. 

Sounding Board’s globally managed, fully-vetted network of world-class coaches covers over 60 countries and 15+ languages around the globe. Sounding Board has extensive experience supporting hypergrowth companies and working with global technology client-partners like Chime, Zoom, Dropbox, Cloudera, VMware, Mozilla, Bloomberg, Plaid, and UserTesting among others to develop coaching solutions designed to drive leadership development and organizational success. In 2021, Co-Founders Christine Tao and Lori Mazan were named EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women™ North America Class of 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, visit soundingboardinc.com.

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Tory Burch Foundation Fellow Program Winner

Our co-founder and CEO, Christine Tao, was selected as 1 of 10 Tory Burch Fellows. This amazing opportunity allows Christine to receive a 1-Year Fellowship with the Tory Burch Foundation.

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Stevie International Business Award Winner

Sounding Board has been named a winner of a Silver Stevie® Award in the Startup of the Year and Tech Startup of the Year categories in the International Business Awards®.

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EY Winning Women Award

The EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women™ program identifies ambitious women entrepreneurs and provides them with advice, resources and access to networks to help unlock their full potential.

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GSV EdTech 150

These are the 150 most transformative growth companies in digital learning: revenue scale, revenue growth, user reach, geographic diversification, and margins profile, to arrive at the top 150 companies.

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Gold Globee Winner

Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind their success, the Globee Awards recognize outstanding achievements and performances in businesses worldwide.

TEAM

Leadership is in our company DNA

Sounding Board has a passion for people and thinking that drives innovative ideas and creative solutions. We embrace the richness of our global community and strive for equality in the development of all leaders.
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Christine Tao
Co-Founder & CEO
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Lori Mazan
Co-Founder / President & C.C.O.
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Tommy Perkins
SVP of Sales & Customer Success
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Niall MacGearailt
SVP, Finance & Ops
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David Liu
VP Legal, Corporate Development & Partnerships
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Ron Buell
SVP of Engineering
ADVISORS AND INVESTORS

Experienced Industry Advisors & Investors

Proudly backed & advised by top tier investors, HR innovators, CEOs, Founders & Thought Leaders
jazz
Gaingels
engage-logo
Canaan Partners Logo
bbbetalogoblackstacked
FTOW-logo-color (1)
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Sounding Board Inc and Correlation VenturesSounding Board Inc and Correlation Ventures
sap_io
AngelList_White_Lockup-5a55c9c4f4cac441f745ea327edb689d4c5829575bcc4e1cf8b1db62e36bf630
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David Blake

Founder & Chairman Degreed

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Bob Huynh

VP Talent Clover Health
(5X Head of People)

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Kevin Johnson

Former CEO - Udemy & Ebates

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Rami Elgandour

Former CEO Nevro

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Richard Qiu

SVP, Bus Dev Udemy

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Jeff Orlando

CLO - Medtronic

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Mary Slaughter

Global Head of Employee Experience, Morningstar

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Naghi Prasad

CEO & CTO Astound.ai

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Ed Miller

Former CEO of Novoed

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Brett Queener

Partner
Bonfire Ventures

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Geoff Watson

Senior Vice President
Guild Education

BOARD OF DIRECTORS
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Christine Tao

Co- Founder, CEO
Sounding Board, Inc.

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Lori Mazan

Co-Founder, Chief Coaching Officer
Sounding Board, Inc.

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Maha Ibrahim

General Partner
Canaan Partners

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John Spinale

Co-Founder and Managing Director
JAZZ Venture Partners

REQUEST A DEMO

We Develop The World's Most Impactful Leaders

Sounding Board offers virtual and scalable enterprise learning solutions that are flexible enough to adapt to rapidly changing work environments. Powered by behavioral science and core leadership capabilities, our proven coaching methodology drives measurable business impact.

Niall MacGearailt

SVP of Finance
Niall MacGearailt leads Sounding Board’s finance division as the SVP of Finance and Operations. Niall 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 role, he is responsible for building and leading the finance & relevant operations functions for the company.

Ron Buell

VP of Engineering
Ron Buell is the VP of Engineering at Sounding Board and an accomplished software professional with extensive experience in leadership, software engineering, project management, and product management. Ron 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 role at Sounding Board, Buell is responsible for all engineering efforts in developing, deploying, and maintaining the enterprise software platform and team for the company.

Tommy Perkins

SVP OF SALES, PARTNERSHIP & CUSTOMER SUCCESS

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.

Drive hiring, retention, engagement, and DEI initiatives with Sounding Board’s leadership coaching solution

Sounding Board is the first leadership development platform that combines technology to scale with world-class coaches – empowering companies to solve urgent people-problems and gain a long-term talent advantage.

Join our coaching team

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

Co-Founder & CCO Sounding Board, Inc.
Lori Mazan is the Co-Founder and Chief Coaching Officer of Sounding Board, the preeminent global leadership development enterprise platform changing the face of leadership development through innovative technology for leaders at all levels of an organization. Lori is a seasoned executive coach who has guided hundreds of corporate executives through 1:1 coaching focused on business outcomes and developing critical leadership skills. Client companies advanced by Lori’s expertise include Fortune titans such as Chevron and Sprint as well as high growth and public companies like Intellikine, and Tapjoy, plus 10XGenomics, which became a public company in 2019 while top executives worked with Lori and the Sounding Board team.
Lori has spent the last 25 years coaching C-Suite executives to leadership excellence. Many of those public and private company CEO’s expressed that they would have liked this caliber of coaching earlier in their careers. Inspired by these experiences, Lori joined with Christine to launch Sounding Board as a feedback-driven, cloud-based leadership coaching platform that could maintain best-in-class leadership coaching while lowering costs to make it affordable and scalable for leaders at every level of their careers.
Before founding Sounding Board, Lori received her Masters’ in Adult Educational Psychology/Counseling from the University of San Francisco and a Bachelors’ in Psychology from the University of Virginia. Lori is an educator and has spent over 10 years as a professor of social psychology and group dynamics while acting as the interim Dean of Students at Holy Names University, She is certified by the industry’s gold standard, the Coaches Training Institute, and is a founding member of the Genentech Preferred Network of Coaches. Sounding Board is one of <3% of sole female founded startups receiving venture funding. In 2019 Sounding Board was selected as 1 of 7 startups (out of 100+ applicants) as part of SAP’s HR tech cohort, a group that represents the rising stars of the next-gen HR ecosystem.

Christine Tao

Co-Founder & CEO Sounding Board, Inc.
Christine Tao is the co-founder & CEO at Sounding Board, a Silicon Valley startup redefining how organizations are developing their leaders. Her extraordinarily rapid career growth to executive management in the media, mobile and tech sectors of Silicon Valley became her inspiration for founding Sounding Board. As she began to manage larger teams and be responsible for growing revenues, it became clear that she needed a “sounding board” to coach her on the development of her leadership skills. That’s where her Sounding Board co-founder, Lori Mazan came on the scene. A seasoned executive coach focused on leadership development, Lori coached Christine on real-world leadership skills that had a direct impact on business outcomes. Based on her positive and impactful experience with leadership development, Christine was driven to make leadership development coaching accessible to people at all levels of the organization.
Christine advises several startups, is a budding angel investor and is also a Tory Burch Foundation Fellow, a foundation dedicated to investing in the success and sustainability of women entrepreneurs.
Prior to co-founding Sounding Board, Christine was a Senior Vice President of Developer Relations at Tapjoy, a venture-backed, leading mobile advertising & publishing network. She led the growth of Tapjoy’s publisher advertising business from 0 to over $100 million in revenues in less than 3 years. Prior to that she led e-commerce partnerships and strategy at YouTube. Christine holds an MBA in Marketing & Operations from Wharton and a BA in Business Administration from UC Berkeley.