Local Executive Coaches in Austin: Top Picks That Stand Out

Three filters.

1. True Austin local. A verifiable Austin-area address, a stated in-person offering, or an ICF Greater Austin listing. National firms with an Austin landing page did not qualify.
2. Credentials stated by the coach. Everything below is quoted from the coach’s own site or an authoritative directory. Where a coach does not publish a credential, we say so rather than guessing.
3. A distinct specialty. No two entries do the same job. The point is to help you pick, not to pad a list.

Motus9: for founders scaling into the CEO seat

Motus9 works with startup founders stepping into CEO roles, first-time VPs and C-suite executives, and leadership teams preparing for a funding round or an exit. The firm is unusual in that it declines the credential conversation outright, stating that its coaches “bring real executive and operating experience, not just coaching credentials.” CEO John Fraser brings more than 30 years in executive leadership, and the bench includes former operators such as a past CEO of Girls Empowerment Network and a former global CRM director at Tiffany & Co.

Office at 2000 E 6th St, Suite 3, Austin. Founded in 2017. Engagements run from one-to-one founder coaching through full leadership team work, group coaching, and operational advising.

Pick them if you want a coach who has sat in the chair you are sitting in, and you care less about letters after a name.

Bluecase Strategic Partners: for CEOs of fast-growing and PE-backed companies

Bluecase was founded in Austin and describes itself as a business performance consulting firm rather than a coaching practice. The work centers on CEOs and whole leadership teams at mid-market and private equity backed companies, including through mergers and acquisitions. Founder David B. Greenspan holds a PhD in High-Performance Psychology, and the team includes Trish Perevich, PCC, with Conscious Business and Team Advantage coaching certificates, and Lori Darley, a certified somatic coach through the Strozzi Institute.

Services run wider than coaching: CEO and group coaching, team building, strategic planning, facilitated peer advisory groups for SVP and C-level leaders, and proprietary assessments.

Pick them if the problem is the whole leadership team, not one leader, and the company is scaling or being bought.

Dr. Katie Pritchett: for leaders who want the neuroscience behind the advice

Katie Pritchett has been an “Award-winning Professor at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas since 2015” and is founder and CEO of KPI Coaching. Before that she was Director of Organizational Effectiveness at Slalom. Her doctoral research centers on experiential learning and mentorship, which shows up in a practice built on embodied leadership and neuroscience rather than frameworks alone. She is a DISC and EQ Certified Facilitator and author of By Design: Leadership Reframed Through Neuroscience.

The work spans one-to-one coaching on her KPI method of Knowledge, Purpose and Impact, team coaching and training, keynotes and interactive workshops through Keynote Labs, and DISC and EQ assessments for individuals and teams. Her client list includes Southwest Airlines, Coca-Cola, Apple, Google and Dell.

Disclosure: Horse + Bow has co-facilitated with Dr. Pritchett. We include her because she is one of the strongest options in this city, and we would rather state the relationship than hide it.

Pick her if you want academic rigor and a research-backed method, and you like that your coach also teaches this at UT.

Vantage Coaching: for tech and nonprofit leaders who want ICF rigor

Kelley Russell-DuVarney, M.A., PCC, is a past president of the ICF Greater Austin chapter and currently listed on its leadership team, which is about as verifiable as local credibility gets in this field. Her ICF profile lists in-person coaching across the Greater Austin area and specialties spanning corporate and organizational work, executive and leadership coaching, group coaching, nonprofits, and a technology industry focus.

She is a sociologist by training, a fellow member of the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital, a Harvard Medical School affiliate, and holds a Resilience Coach certification alongside Appreciative Inquiry and Positive Neuroplasticity training. She authored a 2022 white paper on leadership coaching in nonprofits.

Pick her if you want a credentialed, evidence-oriented coach and you work in tech or the nonprofit sector.

True North Coaching and Development: for leaders running on empty

Shelley Pernot is an ICF-certified leadership, executive, and career coach based in Austin, working on burnout, sustainable leadership, and mindfulness, with a particular focus on burnout coaching for women. She is the author of Running on Empty: The Irreverent Guru’s Guide to Filling up with Mindfulness, and has collaborated with the University of Texas at Austin and NYU on programming for business leaders.

The practice covers one-to-one coaching and mindfulness-based leadership training for organizations, with service pages across the greater Austin area including Leander and Pflugerville.

Pick her if the presenting problem is exhaustion rather than strategy, and you want someone who treats that as the real work.

Merge Coaching: for assessment-led development

Merge Coaching is an organizational development practice at 5900 Balcones Dr, Suite 100, Austin. Lead coach Alina is an “ICF-certified executive coach and certified Birkman consultant” with over 20 years in organizational development and advanced social science degrees.

The practice is built around diagnostics. Birkman and CliftonStrengths assessments sit at the center, feeding into executive coaching packages, OD consulting, and training courses. If you want to start from data about how a person or team is actually wired rather than from a conversation, this is the shape of engagement that does it.

Pick them if you want an assessment-first process and a consultant who can work at the organizational level too.

Executive 360 Coaching: for the C-suite and succession planning

Ellen Lindsey is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with over 25 years as a therapist who also scaled a business and went through a multi-million dollar acquisition. That combination is rare, and it shows up in the work: senior leaders, founders, and C-suite teams navigating growth, transition, or succession.

Engagements typically open with a Leadership Circle Profile 360 and move into monthly coaching, with a separate Team Alignment Program and a “Leadership Coach and Confidant” arrangement for leaders who need a standing thinking partner. In-person work is available in Austin and across Central Texas.

Pick her if the issue has a human dynamics layer, such as a founder transition, a succession, or a team that cannot say the real thing out loud.

Clarity Through Coaching: for leaders in transition

Jen Mauldin, M.Ed., PCC, CPC, holds the PCC credential with over 1,000 coaching hours, trained through the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching in 2011, and is a certified Daring Greatly and Dare to Lead facilitator, meaning she is licensed to deliver Brené Brown’s work. She currently serves as Treasurer of the ICF Greater Austin chapter.

Her practice, founded in 2013, focuses on leadership and transition coaching for leaders across Central Texas, with one-to-one coaching plus presentations and facilitation for groups of all sizes. Her office is in Georgetown, roughly 30 miles north of downtown Austin.

Pick her if you are moving into something new, or you want the Dare to Lead framework delivered by someone certified to deliver it.

Next Level Coaching: for men in leadership

Bryan Daigle, MBA, PCC, runs a leadership and life coaching practice specifically for men: executives, entrepreneurs, and high achievers whose outward success has drifted from what they actually value. He graduated first in his class in engineering from the University of Texas, holds an MBA in Entrepreneurship, spent time at IBM and ExxonMobil, and bootstrapped and sold his own business.

The practice offers one-to-one coaching, a men’s group coaching program, and a free leadership assessment, delivered in person at 505 W Mary St in Austin or virtually, with a Dallas location as well.

Pick him if you want a men’s group alongside one-to-one work, and the question is as much about direction as performance.

Amy Catherine Chibib: for leaders whose question is bigger than the job

Amy Catherine Chibib, CPCC, coaches out of Austin through Life That Works Coaching. The CPCC credential comes through the Co-Active Training Institute, one of the longer-established coach training bodies, and her practice pairs coaching with mediation services.

Her site leads with life and career transition rather than executive coaching, and we would rather say that plainly than overstate it. In practice the work reaches senior people, including multi-year engagements with leaders in management roles. That matters, because a real share of executives arrive at coaching with a question no performance framework answers: whether the shape of their working life still fits. Most executive coaching engagements skirt that question. This is the practitioner for it.

The mediation side is a second reason to know her name. Entrenched conflict between two senior people is a specific problem, and a trained mediator is a better instrument for it than a coach.

Pick her if the question is bigger than the role, or you need a mediator rather than a coach.

Cathryn Baker: for small business CEOs who want a peer group

Cathryn Baker is a Vistage Chair launching an Austin Vistage group for small business CEOs in 2027. Vistage is a different model from one-to-one coaching. It is a confidential peer advisory group of non-competing CEOs meeting monthly, paired with private sessions with the chair in between. For an owner-operator who is the most senior person in their company and has nobody to think out loud with, the peer group is often the thing that was missing.

Because the Austin group is still forming, membership details, meeting cadence, and timing should be confirmed with her directly.

Pick her if you run a small business, you are isolated at the top, and what you need is a room of peers as much as a coach.

Horse + Bow: for teams that need an experience, not another session

Full disclosure, this is us. We are last on the list on purpose, and we are the only entry here working from a different model entirely.

Horse + Bow runs equine-assisted learning and mindfulness archery on a 50-acre ranch in Marble Falls, about 30 miles from Austin. Our specialty is larger teams, typically 18 to 23 people, a size most experiential providers cannot hold well. Horses respond to what a leader is doing rather than what they intend, which makes patterns in presence, clarity and trust visible in a way a conference room cannot. No horse experience required, and no riding is involved.

Kristine also coaches individual executives one to one on a weekly basis, with clients who have been working with her for several years.

Kristine Palmer is a Certified Equine Assisted Learning Facilitator through EAL Academy, trained under Kim Shook. She completed the 2024-2025 cohort of the EQUUS Experience Certification Training with Kelly Wendorf, MCC, and is finishing the remaining requirements, and has trained with Leah Dyck of Equus Attuned. She holds an MBA from St. Edward’s University. Read more on equine-assisted learning for leadership development, or on how it differs from equine therapy. 

She co-facilitates with her husband, Nathaniel J. Palmer, JD. A top-tier trial lawyer and senior partner at the elite litigation firm Reid Collins & Tsai LLP. Recognized nationally by Benchmark Litigation and Lawdragon for developing complex legal strategies in high-stakes commercial litigation, Nate brings his unique background in acute pattern disruption, high-pressure strategic alignment, and teamwork to the arena and guiding the afternoon archery segment as a precision framework for couple focus.

Pick us if you have a team of 18 to 23 that needs to move together, or you are an executive who has done talk-based coaching and wants something that works on the body as well as the mind.

How to choose between them

Four questions narrow this quickly.

1. Is the client one person or the team? One person points to Vantage, True North, Clarity Through Coaching, Next Level, Dr. Pritchett, Amy Catherine Chibib, or Horse + Bow. A team points to Bluecase, Executive 360, Motus9, Dr. Pritchett, or Horse + Bow. A room of peers points to Cathryn Baker.
2. Does the credential matter to your board or HR? If yes, prioritize the ICF credential holders: Vantage, Clarity Through Coaching, Next Level, Merge, and True North, or Dr. Pritchett for academic credentials. If operating experience matters more, Motus9 and Bluecase.
3. Do you want diagnosis or dialogue? Assessment-first points to Merge or Executive 360. Conversation-first points to the rest.
4. In person or virtual? Confirm this directly. Several Austin coaches work primarily by video, so ask if this is important to you.

Common questions

What does executive coaching cost in Austin? Most Austin coaches do not publish rates, and packages vary widely by engagement length and whether assessments are included. Expect to discuss pricing on a discovery call. Engagement lengths commonly run three to twelve months.

How do I verify a coach is credentialed? The International Coaching Federation publishes credential levels, ACC, PCC, and MCC, and the ICF Greater Austin chapter maintains a local member directory. A coach claiming ICF certification without a stated level is worth a direct question.

Is executive coaching the same as leadership development? No. Coaching is typically one-to-one and agenda-led by the client. Leadership development is usually programmatic and organization-led. Several firms on this list do both, but they are different purchases with different outcomes.

Can executive coaching work for a whole leadership team? Yes, though the format changes. Team engagements usually combine individual coaching with facilitated group sessions or an experiential component. Bluecase, Executive 360, Motus9, and Horse + Bow all work at team level.

Why are so many “Austin” coaches not in Austin? Location landing pages are a common SEO tactic. A firm builds a page for every metro it is willing to serve by video. There is nothing wrong with virtual coaching, but if in-person matters to you, check for a street address rather than a city name in a headline.

 Reach out

If your team is the client and the last offsite did not change anything, that is the problem Horse + Bow was built for. Ground-based work with horses and mindfulness archery on 50 acres in the Texas Hill Country, 30 miles from Austin. No horse experience required. No riding involved.

Talk to us about your team. Now Booking 2027 Dates.