Coach / Facilitator

Nicole Forward

Nicole supports leaders to navigate transitions and complexity, transforming challenges into opportunities. Expect a partnership focused on your growth and getting results. Nicole is known for being thoughtful and intentional, building strong partnerships, listening deeply, all while challenging and supporting leaders in achieving their goals

Clients appreciate Nicole’s ability to:
  • Drawing connections that reveal deeply insightful patterns that catalyze new actions
  • Outside the box thinking and generating new possibilities
  • Balancing compassion with accountability
  • Creating a deeper sense of meaning and purpose
  • Getting high quality results
  • Navigating cultural differences and holding space for experiences around diversity, equity and inclusion
  • In-depth experience as an internal executive leader in today’s challenging environment

Areas of expertise:

  • Developing a deep connection with clients, allowing for open, honest, conversations that lead to  meaningful breakthroughs
  • Going beyond “best practices” to “next practices”
  • Building strong, trust-based relationships with senior level leaders, guiding them through key or high-stakes transitions with compassion and accountability
  • Designing and implementing strategies for impactful team dynamics and leadership effectiveness
  • Breaking down silos and fostering cross-functional collaboration

Bio

Nicole brings over 25 years of experience in strategic leadership development and is known for her ability to challenge conventions, her clients value her ability to navigate complex dynamics, while always keeping their personal and professional well-being at the forefront. Nicole empowers executives to reshape their approaches, strengthening cross-functional leadership and aligning teams toward greater impact. Her extensive work in both Fortune 100 as well as nonprofit settings gives her unique insight into navigating complex business structures, with a commitment to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion. She is certified in MBTI, Hogan, DISC, CCL Benchmarks and several other assessments and has a master’s degree in Human Development, where she wrote her thesis on how people break intergenerational patterns of behaviors.

She has lived in Latin America and Europe as well as Denver, Seattle, Los Angeles and New York.  She loves spending time in the mountains, hiking, kayaking, spelunking and being in the outdoors with her husband and yellow lab, Derby.

Client List

Client Testimonials

As a senior leader in a Fortune 40 company, I often don’t have time for focusing on my own development and frankly, would often find more important ways to spend my time.  But my experience with Nicole as a coach was so good that I always made the time.
Kimberly Wyman
VP, T-Mobile
Nicole employs a skillset uniquely suited to helping executives achieve results. She uses her background as a facilitator and talent development executive to ask powerful questions and engage in transformative conversations.  Given the wide variety of industries she’s worked in, Nicole is equipped to understand the nuances and political landscape within organizations and help leaders navigate the complexities of today’s environment.  Nicole’s coaching helped me to uncover recurring patterns of thoughts and actions that were obstacles to realizing my goals. Armed with this insight, I’m better equipped to make lasting positive changes in my personal and professional life.
Rob McGowan. Sr
Director of HR, St. Lawrence Health
I’m an executive leader with 25 years of professional success, yet I recently experienced a difficult, prolonged career transition which left me mentally and emotionally drained. Nicole agreed to coach me. She quickly established rapport with me by asking thought-provoking questions and providing me with a safe environment for increasing my self-awareness and regaining my confidence. She has the unique ability to think analytically, while providing a high degree of empathy. She showed me how to focus on my strengths and past accomplishments, which resulted in me regaining my confidence, and transitioning successfully in my new role.
Anita Kelley
Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Outreach