Coach/Faciilitator

Christy Tonge

Christy helps clients lead impactfully with mind, intuition, and heart.

Christy is a strategically oriented, high-energy, and thoughtful Executive Coach with 20+ years experience helping leaders become the best version of themselves and achieve stellar results.

Clients appreciate Christy’s ability to:
  • Combine warmth & empathy with direct straight talk
  • Ask insightful questions that prompt meaningful “ahas”
  • Equip leaders to expand results and relational connection
  • Help people effectively position themself for greater responsibility, promotion or impact
  • Enable leaders to focus on the priorities that matter most to achieve “early wins” as well as lasting change from the inside out

Areas of expertise:

  • Equipping seasoned executives or emerging leaders to develop executive presence, enterprise mindset and increased credibility & influence
  • Helping executives who often get shielded from honest feedback as they go up the ladder to uncover blindspots and unintended “diminisher” habits, increase team engagement and grow coaching finesse to achieve results through others
  • Strengthening emotional intelligence (EQ), navigating difficult conversations up, down or across, building high-performing, inclusive, innovative teams
  • Supporting leaders of high visibility, high stakes initiatives who need to be successful in driving consensus, managing competing priorities and balancing demands
  • Tech, Finance, Biotech/Pharma & Entertainment companies whose technical, analytical, product or creative employee profiles require someone with extensive experience with their disciplines

Bio

Before Christy’s career as a strategic executive coach, consultant, facilitator, and speaker, she began in Product Development. She collaborated as Lead Product Designer with top thinkers in Leadership and Innovation, helping transform their books into practical tools and products for executives.

Christy holds a BA in History and a Master’s in Organization Development from Stanford University. She leads the SF Chapter of Culture First, a global movement for leaders to shape thriving company culture. She is the Bay Area Producer and Host of the global TedTalk-like speaker series, DisruptHR. And, Christy is the Producer and Host of the Leaders Get Real Podcast, interviewing best-selling authors and authentic leaders to share their wisdom & inspiration with her Coachees.

An adventurer, Christy lives in Silicon Valley and loves rock climbing, skiing, outdoor adventures, travel, and cultural experiences with her husband and 2 young adult kids. Passionate about helping at-risk youth, she’s involved on nonprofit Boards to support vulnerable kids in the Bay Area and in Kenya. She & her family took a half year service venture around the world, living in India, Thailand, Honduras, and East Africa. Christy holds passionately that people in any role, at any age, can bring about transformational change.

Client List

Client Testimonials

Christy has been a game-changer for me as a leader. Her warm yet direct approach helped me step back from the day-to-day grind and focus on the bigger picture. Through her coaching, I learned how to delegate effectively, empowering my team to take ownership while I concentrated on strategic initiatives and influencing across and upward. Christy’s guidance also transformed the way I coach my team, fostering their growth and independence.The shift has been remarkable—not only am I no longer buried in the weeds, but my team is more engaged and capable than ever. I couldn’t have achieved this without Christy’s expert coaching.
Senior VP, Product
Global Biotech company
Christy is an amazing coach whom I'm thankful to be working with. She is exceptional in helping me identify key driving factors for my behaviors. She gets me! She demonstrates an incredibly strong understanding of people and leadership while providing me with many impactful tools, and consistent follow-ups to help me stay on track. Her coaching has positively impacted my team and business in several ways–more effective cross-functional partnership and collaboration with my peers, stronger EQ–managing conflict from competing priorities or difficult personalities, and greater skill in influencing senior leadership decisions. I’ve also gained enhanced leadership balance–leading from my mind and heart. Her Coaching has helped me to grow executive presence and bold influence while staying true to my authentic, reserved style.
Director
Disney Studios
Working with Christy was critical in shaping my career. She helped me find clarity about my strengths and passions, and stretch my capabilities to become an effective influencer/“intrapreneur” within a large corporation – able to cut through red tape, drive consensus and innovate. Following that Coaching experience, I made substantial breakthrough contributions in my role, and then ventured out as Founder/CEO of an Entertainment Tech company. I credit my success in large part because of the self-awareness, vision and “intrapreneurial” influence skills I developed through our Coaching.
Sr. Director
Audible, Amazon
Christy’s Coaching was outstanding. It was stretching yet truly enjoyable.The insights gained enabled me to win over key executives and peers and motivate my teams to increase project delivery by 8 x’s[!]. Her Coaching helped me lead a breakthrough that had never been done–getting our Senior team to agree to defined annual goals and KPIs…and also helped me set challenging KPIs for my team that are driving the business forward exponentially. I was able to reduce my intense work day from 15 hours to 8-10 by building more trust and putting my team in the spotlight in my place. I saw evidence that my team now feels valued and engaged, becoming the highest scoring leader on our Engagement Survey. Christy was incredibly insightful, supportive, humorous and patient throughout, and I learned so much. I’m very appreciative and enlightened for the experience..
Chief Technology Officer / Head of Engineering
Saas Company