The Inner Game Equation:

Performance = potential - interference

— Sir John Whitmore, Coaching for Performance

The International Coaching Federation (ICF) defines coaching as:

Partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.

WHAT IS EXECUTIVE COACHING?
HOW IS IT DIFFERENT FROM…?

  • When working with a consultant, you’ve hired a subject matter expert to do the work and hand you results. The client is the expert in the client's life. The only thing the coach needs to be an expert in is the coaching process itself.

  • A good mentor has already walked your intended path. They have the advice, experience, and network to guide you. A coach follows the client's agenda every step of the way and will not impose their own experiences upon the client.

  • Therapy is clinically focused on identifying, treating, and healing past trauma. While coaching acknowledges the past, it is focused on moving forward. Coaching identifies and addresses the gap between current and desired state.

  • Training is the transfer of knowledge, skills, and abilities from the instructor to the student. While coaching will certainly make you think deeper and differently, the industry ethos presumes clients have the capacity to uncover their own solutions.

  • It requires hard work on the part of both the coach and client!

M E E T  T H E   F O U N D E R

Built by someone who’s been inside the hardest kind of change.

T H E   F O U N D A T I O N

Some coaches come from the corporate world. Some from academia. Chris spent a decade inside the intelligence community — leading the kind of organizational change where getting it wrong isn't an option. That's not a credential she mentions lightly. It's the lens through which she sees every engagement.

W H Y   E X E C U Q U E S T

Chris founded ExecuQuest because she kept seeing the same thing: brilliant leaders with clear vision, stalled by organizations that couldn't keep up. Not because the leaders lacked strategy. Because they lacked the right support at the right moment — someone who understood both the human dynamics and the organizational systems driving the resistance.

ExecuQuest exists to be that support. Not a consultant who hands you a deck. Not a therapist who helps you process. A coach who holds you accountable — to the work, to your organization, and to yourself.

T H E   P A T H   H E R E

Her career didn't follow a straight line — and she'll be the first to tell you. Before the intelligence community, Chris managed geriatric care facilities. The work was meaningful. It was also, she eventually recognized, not emotionally sustainable for the long haul. That kind of self-awareness — the willingness to name what's not working and change course — is exactly what she brings to her clients.

She went back to school, earned a Master's degree in Human Resource Development, and built a career at the intersection of people, organizations, and change. The IC was where that work became something harder, more rigorous, and more consequential.

In 2019, she completed the Leadership Coaching for Organizational Performance training program at American University in Washington, DC. Her coach training continues as she pursues her Associate Certified Coach and Advanced Certification in Team Coaching certifications through the International Coaching Federation.

W H O   S H E   S E R V E S

Chris works with C-suite executives in technical and financial services — specifically leaders supporting the mission through government and intelligence community contracts. This is a niche she knows from the inside. The culture, competition, constraints, politics, and the particular weight of leading change in this environment.

Her passion led Chris to design a specific Shattering Ceilings coaching package for women in leadership — regardless of the industry or job title. Much progress has been made in breaking through glass ceilings, but there is more work to be done. Chris is honored to do her part supporting women across the globe. Proceeds from this donation-based package fund service projects and donations which empower women around the world.

To inspire people, don't show them your superpowers.

Show them theirs.

-Unknown

Chris is based in central Maryland and works with clients virtually and in person. Outside of work, Chris collects passport stamps and mountain views with equal enthusiasm, volunteers with elderly community members, and rotates through a new craft hobby every few weeks— a pattern her husband has learned to accept with grace. She shares her home with an incredible stepson, two cats, and one very beloved dog.