We change lives by teaching people how to be exceptional leaders.

About

Executive-U programs help you develop your leadership skills and take control of your career. If you are already a people leader, your personal development is essential to your future, but developing your employees is much more critical to your success.

Leaders have not only the power to impact their employees lives, but also the responsibility to do so. People in executive roles are there because they have intentionally created their career path. Along the way, they learned some critical skills and the most exceptional of them have enrolled the help of coaches, mentors, and career sponsors. They knew they needed to think and act strategically in order to get to the next level in their career.

By the age of 23, our founder, Sheila Cromar, had achieved massive success in the Learning & Development industry through her career at Discover Card and then at Communications & Commerce. There, she developed a national training department and grew her team of three entry level facilitators to a team of twenty corporate trainers with varying levels of experience in three locations across the United States. Unfortunately the success came at a price. She experienced intense burn-out and emotional drain from a toxic company culture. Realizing that she needed to re-evaluate the fit between her leadership vision, her career strategy, and the company’s culture, Sheila set out on a deeply personal journey to re-discover the connection of leadership to the heart and soul of humanity.

She studied communication, leadership, health, balance, and connectedness. Through this sabbatical from corporate America, she was able to give her leadership training programs more depth and impact by connecting both the heart and mind. She continued to consult for leaders and business owners and eventually, she found her way back to a corporate job via an offer of Training Manager for eBay.

While at eBay, she worked tirelessly to implement leadership development with her teams and through her work with the global women in technology groups. She worked to implement employee recognition programs and processes that would positively benefit the employees and help them learn the skills that would help them to adapt to the rapidly changing environment and further develop their skills to advance their carers.

Sheila survived over sixteen lay-offs and re-organizations during her ten year career at eBay. She was heartbroken for her colleagues who were laid off. She watched well qualified candidates struggle to regain their footing and she was also dismayed by the emotional impact to those who survived the re-organizations.

That is when it hit her. Sheila knew she had limited impact as a singular employee within a company, but by making her training and coaching programs available to companies and individuals around the globe, she could in fact, change the world. Sheila then dove headfirst into phase 3 of her career-life journey and supercharged her consulting business by expanding Executive-U Leadership Academy.

Sheila’s approach to leadership development is practical and tactical. There are no shortage of training programs full of theories and promises, but most fall short when providing application based resources. She asks tough questions, challenges thinking patterns, and asks that her students empower themselves in order to take control of their careers. Her programs help you understand the “why’s” behind behavior and also implement change programs that lead to lasting results.

By aligning her corporate experience and her personal journey to connect our humanity, Sheila is on a mission to change the world by developing as many leaders and future leaders as possible. When there are fantastic leaders at every level of an organization, the lives of its employees are forever changed for the better. 🌎