Carol Kauffman

Updated at: Feb. 25, 2023, 10:20 a.m.

Carol Kauffman is an international leader in the field of coaching and has more than 40,000 hours of practice. Her clients primarily comprise C-level leaders and their teams or elite athletes and creatives. She has been described as a lateral thinker who pushes the edges with a sense of humor and can disrupt someone out of their comfort zone. She was shortlisted by Thinkers50 as one of the top eight coaches around the globe for her thought leadership, entrepreneurial spirit, and contribution to coaching best practices, She is a founding member of Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches and ranked the number one leadership coach in the world. She founded the Institute of Coaching with a $2 million gift from the Harnisch Foundation.

Carol is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, a visiting professor at Henley Business School, and a senior leadership adviser at Egon Zehnder. At Harvard she launched the annual Coaching in Leadership and Healthcare Conference, one of the most highly attended events at HMS. Her professional development program, Leader as Coach, won Harvard's inaugural Program Award for Culture of Excellence in Mentoring and has been rolled out throughout the United States. She was also the founding editor in chief of Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, the first peer-reviewed coaching journal published by a major house.

Carol's unparalleled expertise in the art and science of coaching combines uniquely with her business savvy, high energy, and appreciation for the absurd. It is easy for Carol to speak the truth to the powerful in a way they find intriguing, informative, and enjoyable. She brings this energy to her keynote addresses, master classes, and town halls, which are high-impact and memorable.

David Noble and Carol teamed up in 2015 and have worked extensively at the top of the house with team coaching, workshops, and leader-as-coach programs. Together they are an unstoppable force, working with nearly any business coaching challenge and bringing to an engagement remarkable and complementary skill sets. The strength of their partnership creates a safe and enriching environment that fosters trust, growth, and innovation. For the most complex leaders, Carol and David developed their unusual "two-on-one" coaching model to unlock the most difficult and often paradoxical challenges.

Carol is married with two children and based outside of Boston. She and her husband love prehistoric art, safaris, and anthropology and travel the world to follow their diverse interests.


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