Focus

I am passionate about empowering and inspiring you to live your best life – both professionally and personally. I partner with C-Suite executives, professionals of all levels, corporate and non-profit leaders, business owners, entrepreneurs, new grads, and students, to help you realize your potential and recognize your natural talents, to achieve career and life fulfillment.

I provide genuine caring, business savvy, and personalized resources, to help you build a realistic plan to achieve your goals. I am your trusted advisor to coach you in advancing in your career, enhancing your leadership and/or management skills, making a career change, attaining work-life balance, and clarifying your personal vision to identify a fulfilling career/life direction.

My practice is committed to DEI and is LGBTQIA+ Friendly.

My Approach

“I utilize an integrative process customized for your individual style and goals, with a flexible step-by-step process and practical strategies you can start to apply immediately.”

Resources and Strategies for You

•  Highlands Ability Battery, Leadership Report and Lawyer Report; Strong Career Interest Inventory; Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator; and key values and skill assessments for executives, professionals, business owners, and students.
• Coaching for managerial/leadership edge, professional power image, decision-making, communication/interpersonal strategies, leveraging relationships, and optimizing organization.
• Strategies to navigate barriers to success, such as workplace politics, low confidence, and emotional regulation in high-stress situations.
• Self-branding, marketing and promotion, resume and LinkedIn profile development, job search planning, targeted networking strategies, and interview coaching including mock interviews.

A Holistic Whole-Person Advantage

• Whether you are dealing with a career decision, a difficult relationship, ADHD, or a learning, emotional, or medical issue, each of these issues impacts the others.
• A holistic approach offers a big-picture view of how issues naturally intersect in your life. The advantage of this perspective is that new solutions emerge that might not have been evident by considering each issue in isolation.
• This is why I’ve undertaken education and training in numerous practice areas that include career counseling, executive and leadership coaching, mental health counseling, couples coaching, ADHD coaching and others – so I can be a coaching resource for you, whatever your challenge, with the benefit of your “whole-person” perspective.

Experience

• With a coaching background of 20 years, providing leadership, executive, career, and life coaching services, I know what works and what doesn’t.
• I’ve coached professionals in numerous occupations and levels including, C-suite execs, physicians, VPs, directors, middle managers, project managers, business owners, lawyers, IT specialists, accountants, healthcare administrators, academics, creatives, and students.
• My approach is not ‘one-size-fits-all’, but rather, a customized proprietary 6-step approach to meet your individual goals and needs.

What Clients Say:

“The amount of knowledge and resources that I received when working with Marilyn are truly invaluable. I obtained a deeper understanding of myself and gained major insight into my abilities and patterns of learning. With all this newfound information I was able to confidently take the next steps in both my life and in my career decisions. For this I am truly grateful and would definitely recommend Marilyn to anyone uncertain about their career, or even those who are simply interested in understanding a little more about themselves.” A student

“I came to Marilyn for career counseling because I wanted to have a better sense of direction for the second half of my working adulthood.  Her assistance was absolutely invaluable. Marilyn’s whole person approach, where she combines the Highland Ability testing with the Strong Inventory and the Myers-Briggs assessment, helped me understand how my personality, my natural abilities, and my learned skills all work together and translate into a career.  The Highlands test was actually one of the most helpful assessments I have ever done.  Some of the results surprised me – I learned things about myself that I never realized, and those results opened career possibilities for me that I would have never even known about or considered.  Marilyn is very knowledgeable, professional and relatable, and I am very grateful that I worked with her.  Ultimately, I ended up with a job that is very satisfying because it is a great fit for who I truly am.  Thank you, Marilyn!”  A professional

Notable Honors: Co-author of Sanity and Success for Working Women – A Quick Guide to Survive and Thrive in the Corporate World, podcast speaker on “GettingStarted.Life”, guest career consultant on Fox TV’s “Good Day Chicago” and NBC TV’s “Starting Over”; quoted in Crain’s Chicago Business, Tribune’s Employment Outlook, Today’s Chicago Woman Magazine (and tcwmag.com), Make It Better Magazine, and ACA’s Counseling Today.

Early Experience: Director of Training for McCormick Place/Navy Pier, Manager for Coldwell Banker, Director of Professional Development at North Shore Board, and Certified Associate for Lee Hecht Harrison (LHH). Additional roles: recruiter, corporate training consultant, freelance writer, and teacher.

Education and Certifications

Certified Coaching Instructor, Trained in Vertical Leadership Development, Certified Career Counselor, Illinois Licensed Professional Counselor; National Certified Counselor, M.S. in Counseling, M.A. in Human Resource Development, B.A. in Education, Certified Practitioner in Myers-Briggs Type Indicator/MBTI and Strong Interest and Skills Confidence Inventory, Certified in Highlands Ability Battery and Personal Vision Coaching.

Professional Memberships: Institute of Coaching, McLean, Affiliate of Harvard Medical School, Illinois Counseling Association, National Career Development Association, Exclusive Professional Women’s Networking Group, Children and Adults with Attention and Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.