2026 Executive Coaching Event
Experience the power of professional coaching in an interactive evening designed to spark new ideas, fresh perspectives, and meaningful connections.
Choose three round-table coaching sessions on topics such as communicating your value, navigating career transitions, building your leadership advantage, and more. Each session is intentionally kept small to encourage conversation, real-time coaching, and practical takeaways you can put into action immediately.
If you’ve ever been curious about how professional coaching can support your personal or professional growth, this is the perfect opportunity to experience it firsthand. Come with your questions, challenges, or goals—and leave with new insights and actionable next steps.
After registering, you’ll receive a session selection survey where you’ll rank your preferred coaching sessions. Be sure to complete it promptly, as space in each session is limited. Every effort will be made to place you in your top choices.
A very special thank you to The Houston Constellation Group at Morgan Stanley and Bua’s Bistro for generously sponsoring this event and helping make this experience possible.
Event Details
Tuesday, September 15, 2026, 5:30 – 8:00 p.m.
United Way of Greater Houston – 50 Waugh Drive Houston, TX 77007
Event Logistics
Attendees will choose three coaches/sessions to attend during the evening. You will receive the session survey link after registration. These sessions are limited, so be sure to select yours as soon as possible.
Keynote: Coaching Journey and Being Ready for What’s Next
Rhonda Parmer
Dr. Rhonda Parmer is a business coach, consultant, and founder of Leadership Executive Group. For over 20 years, she helped leaders and owners of growing businesses build cultures of trust without losing time or money by inserting simple, repeatable systems.
Through her trademarked EASE framework, Rhonda helps 9-5ers and young adults build their companies from the ground up by engaging people, aligning priorities, simplifying systems, and empowering action. Tonight, Rhonda brings her educator’s heart, executive leadership experience, and entrepreneurial insight to help aspiring business owners build forward with clarity, confidence, and E.A.S.E.
Meet Our Coaches
Johanna Born
The deadline that suddenly moved up. The “would you like to say a few words?” in front of the whole group. The child who just won’t listen. We all respond to stress, but very few of us recognize our patterns. In this interactive session, you’ll discover your automatic stress response and your personal pattern through guided self-reflection. Nothing you discover has to be shared, and there’s no need to disclose personal situations. You’ll gain awareness of how stress shows up in you and leave with hands-on techniques to apply in your daily life, turning automatic reactions into deliberate choices.
About the Coach:Johanna Born is a certified ADHD and Life Coach, trained through ADDCA and MentorCoach®, two of the most respected coach training institutions in the field. Based in Houston, Texas, she works with clients across the globe in English and German.
After more than a decade in corporate management roles across Germany and Asia, including three years in Hong Kong and most recently at SAP, Johanna began ADHD coach training to better support her own child. What started as a personal journey quickly became a professional mission.
Today she works with kids, teens, and adults navigating ADHD, career transitions, relocations, burnout, or difficult life stages where the old ways of coping no longer work. Drawing on positive psychology, neurobiology, and a strengths-based approach, she helps clients uncover their strengths, understand what’s holding them back, and co-create strategies that fit their real life so they move forward with clarity and confidence.
Orlando Gafford
There are three aspects of our consciousness that determine how successful we are able to move toward our goals. By understanding these three aspects, we can take targeted actions to begin to move ourselves forward.
About the Coach: Orlando holds a Master’s degree in Human Resources and Organization Development from the University of Louisville and is a Certified Professional in the field of Change Management.
Orlando has delivered training solutions in countries throughout Central America, North America and Europe. His vast experiences as a training and change leader as well as his extensive experience in personnel development are valuable resources to his clients. Orlando has set up university programs, not for profit training programs, organizational training solutions and has conducted community workshops. He has served as a keynote speaker and has delivered learning solutions at international conventions.
Channey Nicole
You’ve worked hard. You’ve delivered results. Yet somehow, someone else got the opportunity.
Why?
In this candid and interactive coaching session, we’ll uncover the four hidden behaviors that quietly derail careers. Participants will discover which one may be holding them back, and gain a new perspective on leadership readiness.
Be ready for an honest, practical, slightly uncomfortable, and potentially career-changing session.
About the Coach: Throughout her career, Channey Nicole, PMP, PMI-ACP, has guided multi-functional teams across compliance, operations, customer experience, and organizational training and development, consistently delivering measurable results while cultivating cultures of safety and inclusivity.
She currently works as a PMP instructor at Rice University, the founder and owner of CalThink, a project management services company, an international Agile Transformation Coach, and serves as an Area Director for Toastmasters, District 56.
Through her business, she partners with organizations such as PMI Houston and SCORE Houston to provide practical training and development resources for project managers, executives, and business owners.
Jessica Thomas
The First Step to Powerful Leadership: Why Self-Trust Is Your Greatest Leadership Advantage
As leaders, we’re often encouraged to seek more confidence, more knowledge, more proof, or more experience before making our next move. But real leadership advantage comes down to trusting yourself enough to act on what you already know, not waiting for more of anything first.
In this interactive coaching roundtable, we’ll explore why self-trust is the foundation of confident leadership, clear decision-making, and sustainable success. Through guided discussion and personal reflection, you’ll identify where you may be second-guessing yourself, uncover what’s getting in the way, and leave with one practical action to strengthen your self-trust and lead with greater clarity, confidence, and calm authority, so you can enjoy the success you’ve already earned.
About the Coach: Jessica Thomas is an transformation and leadership advisor, Certified High Performance Coach, and founder of Zenith Coaching LLC. With more than 20 years of experience helping organizations and leaders navigate complex organizational change, she has partnered with executives, leadership teams, and high-performing professionals to strengthen leadership effectiveness, build trust, and lead change that actually holds once she’s gone.
Over two decades of leading major transformations, Jessica has learned that successful change rarely depends on the plan alone. It depends on the people carrying it forward. And when the pressure is high, even exceptional leaders can begin to second-guess their own judgment. Today, Jessica coaches ambitious women leaders who are ready to stop second-guessing themselves and start leading from a place of self-trust. Through her signature Power Pathway™ framework, she helps clients make aligned decisions, strengthen their leadership presence, and build success they actually feel, not just achieve.
Rebecca Wells
When uncertainty, overwhelm, or competing priorities make it hard to know what to do next, it’s easy to delay taking action. But progress doesn’t require having every answer—it begins with one intentional step. In this interactive coaching session, you’ll discover a practical framework for moving beyond overwhelm, navigating uncertainty, and creating momentum one intentional step at a time.
Through guided reflection, conversation, and action planning, you’ll identify your next first step and leave with a repeatable coaching tool to help you make decisions, recalibrate when plans change, celebrate progress, and continue moving forward with confidence.
About the Coach: Rebecca Wells, ACC is an ICF Associate Certified Coach and founder of Flow Coaching Services. With more than 25 years of leadership experience spanning education, business, athletics, and coaching, she helps individuals and teams move beyond uncertainty and into intentional action.
Motivated to help people go beyond what they once thought possible, Rebecca partners with clients to clarify their vision, align their actions with their values, and create the plan their goals deserve. Her experience includes coaching aspiring entrepreneurs, students navigating the transition to college, and emerging leaders stepping into new roles with confidence.
Whether clients are launching something new, navigating change, or stepping into leadership, Rebecca helps them build clarity, create momentum, and discover that they don’t need the whole route—they only need the next first step.
Tiffany A. Washington
Whether you’re leading a team, pursuing a promotion, growing a business, or navigating a career transition, your ability to communicate your value shapes the opportunities that come your way.
In this interactive session, you’ll explore how influential leaders establish credibility, communicate their expertise with confidence, and position themselves for high-impact opportunities. Through a practical coaching exercise, you’ll refine one real-world conversation—whether it’s a promotion, proposal, interview, presentation, negotiation, or business opportunity—using a framework you can immediately apply.
You’ll leave with greater clarity, stronger messaging, and a practical approach for communicating your value when the stakes are high.
About the Coach: Tiffany A. Washington is a business strategist, keynote speaker, and founder of Transformation7, LLC, where she helps leaders, consultants, and organizations communicate their value, strengthen their positioning, and pursue high-impact opportunities with confidence.
A former teacher and school principal, Tiffany combines the science of learning with practical business strategy to create experiences that move people from insight to action. Her work has supported Fortune 500 companies, educational institutions, government agencies, and entrepreneurs seeking to expand their influence and accelerate growth.
Known for her engaging facilitation style and practical frameworks, Tiffany has led learning experiences for organizations including Rolls-Royce, Humana, Amazon Music, and Frost Bank. Whether she’s speaking from the stage or coaching professionals in small-group settings, her mission is the same: to help people communicate their expertise in ways that inspire trust, open doors, and create meaningful opportunities.
Yvonne Rocha Contreras
Sometimes, careers are shaped in rooms you’re not in. This session reveals why performance alone isn’t enough, how sponsorship drives those decisions, and the practical steps to take to ensure your name is being championed when it matters most.
About the Coach:Yvonne Rocha Contreras is a truth‑teller, strategist, and architect of reinvention. An accomplished HR leader, she has spent her career cultivating talent, shaping high‑performance cultures, and aligning people strategy with business impact. Today, as CEO & Founder of YourPath Navigator and co‑host of Savvy Sisters & Cocktail Conversations podcast, she empowers high‑achieving women to ditch doubt, embrace their brilliance, and build legacies that shine in their third act. Her work blends celebration with clarity — because powerful women know who they are and move forward with intention.
Gabrielle Baumeyer
About the Coach: Gabrielle Baumeyer is the Founder and CEO of Baumeyer Coaching and a certified Executive Coach with nearly three decades of experience developing leaders and teams worldwide. Known for quickly connecting with audiences, she challenges thinking while creating an engaging, approachable environment and inspiring people to lead with purpose. She trained through Rice University’s CoachRICE program and holds Associate Certified Coach credentials from the International Coaching Federation. Gabrielle’s leadership impact has earned her the Houston Business Journal’s Women Who Mean Business award, and she was recognized as a top fundraising athlete as an Ironman Arizona finisher. Gabrielle earned her Bachelor of Science in Architectural Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and is a published, international best-selling author as a collaborator of the book Six Figure Chicks, Houston, Volume 1.
Radu Filip
About the Coach: Radu Filip is Sr. Global Continuous Improvement Manager. With a seniority of 18 years at SLB (Schlumberger) he is passionate about efficient processes, operations and strategy execution. A Rice MBA’08 grad, it weathered two economic major downturns, a major industry downturn, the pandemic, and going through an acquisition (by SLB in 2016).