Coach Kelly & Associates

Coach Kelly Bio

“It’s good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

Coach Kelly Bio

“It’s good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” — Ursula K. Le Guin
Coach Kelly Holm Profile Picture
Kelly L. Holm, MCC

Founder & Chief Coaching Officer
Senior Executive Coach | Leadership Team Coach | Strategic Thought Partner

Former C-Suite Executive

“Forty under 40” Leadership Honoree.

Top 5% of Professionally Credentialed Coaches

Master Certified Coach (ICF & Hudson Institute of Coaching)

International Breadth & Depth

Raised in an international school setting, and now serving diverse executives across 6 continents.

Why Coach Kelly?

The top five strengths Kelly’s clients refer to:
• Breadth of business and leadership experience.
• Depth of coaching expertise.
• Strategic, organized approach
• Ability to zoom from big-picture perspective to situation-specific nuance.
• “Velvet Hammer’ style of challenging that unlocks deeper insight.

This translates to a potent ability to help you authentically and effectively scale your impact for sustainably higher return on your time.

Kelly’s specialty is visionary, entrepreneurial executives in high-growth, international environments with billion-dollar P&L responsibility, and “Best Company”, Certified B Corporation sensibilities.

Popular Programs

Confidential Sounding Board & Strategic Thought Partner

Senior executives desiring dedicated ‘think time’ with a partner skilled at drawing out, expanding, exploring, and pressure-testing approaches, particularly during fast-paced periods of significant growth and organizational transformation.

Accelerating Executive Leader Effectiveness

Rising Star (Senior Leader Bench) and ‘Diamond in the Rough’ executives navigating fast growth, expanding roles, international rotations, onboarding to new roles, and/or senior executive bench (C-Suite succession planning).

Accelerating Leadership Team Effectiveness

From accelerating the ‘forming’ and ‘re-forming’ stages of new or transitioning Leadership Teams (“Tuning the Orchestra”), to deepening your team’s ability to leverage diverse strengths and build perpetual momentum for accelerating growth and strategic impact at scale (“Leadership Team Flywheel”).

Coaching Expertise

The top three strengths that Kelly’s clients refer to are her breadth of business and leadership experience, her depth of coaching expertise, and her ‘velvet hammer’ style of challenging leaders to unlock further growth and potential. Her niche is helping entrepreneurial executives to exponentially scale strategic impact, with both authenticity and purpose, and sustainably higher return on their time.
Kelly is a seasoned executive leader, award-winning coach, published author, and strategic thought partner with over 30 years of combined corporate and entrepreneurial experience. Her breadth includes extensive experience coaching hundreds of diverse executive leaders spanning 6 continents and 30 sectors, from tech start-up to the “Fortune 50”, with a concentration in fast-growth environments and leaders with international responsibility and multi-billion-dollar P&L impact. Her depth includes the significant dedication required to become a Master Certified Coach (International Coaching Federation and Hudson Institute of Coaching), which represents fewer than 5% of professionally credentialed coaches worldwide
Kelly Holm

Dedication to Excellence

Coach Kelly Cycling

Executive Leadership Journey

Coach Kelly developed a “leadership from the inside-out” philosophy over two decades of leading diverse teams through significant transitions, including the dot-com boom, bust, and recovery, mergers and acquisitions, and privately-held to employee-owned ESOP business transitions. She became a Puget Sound Business Journal “40 under Forty” leadership honoree, affirming the vision to make her passion for coaching leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs the central focus of her work.

Prior leadership roles include:

Client Relationships

We foster long-term client relationships, including organizations Kelly has worked with in various capacities since 1990, and executives who reach out to us repeatedly throughout their careers. To honor the confidentiality policy of the ICF and individual client preferences, we refrain from publishing client names here. Additional client testimonials can be found on LinkedIn and references are available upon private request.

Clients describe Coach Kelly as a “gifted systems thinker” with a unique blend of senior executive experience, strategic perspective, calming presence, and uncanny insight. In 2014 she received the “Coach of the Year” award, Washington State, from the International Coach Federation for her work with a select team of coaches developing leaders at a global, Seattle-based family foundation.

Personal Background

Raised in a family transferred every three years by IBM (fondly referred to as “I’ve Been Moved”), from an early age, Kelly attended an international K-12 school and became fluent in a second language. This immersive experience greatly informed her facility and passion for working with diverse executives, contexts, and organizational cultures. Kelly and her partner of 27 years are now based in the greater Seattle area, where she specializes in working via phone and video with diverse leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs worldwide.

Industry Segments Served Include: