Founder, Michelle Sullivan, Offers CxO Consulting

I don’t normally post personal things online, but here goes…

Big changes for me as my professional life has come full circle. As a #leader, I always focused on the people side and understood that without a good foundation of valued, motivated, and competent people, it didn’t matter how great your technology, product, processes, etc. Yes, there could be short-term gains and successes, but what mattered first and foremost, were people. A bit of “Built to Last” in my mantra.

After some amazing learnings in a GM role at MUZU.TV, a leadership role at Kaiser Permanente leading 10 technology teams, and culminating with my role as COO at Reppify, and receiving my Master of Science in Global Business & Leadership (MSGL) at USD, I embarked on forming a company, Dragonfly Consultants. Dragonfly solely focused on the people side – leadership development, organizational culture, executive coaching, leadership retreats, etc, while I was still able to have my hands in building and running a business. And, I really enjoyed setting up all of our infrastructure, processes, and operations.

Fast forward five years later. After a very successful run working with amazing clients, partners, and consultants, my business partner and I have decided to dissolve Dragonfly. “Walking the talk” of the work that I do with my clients, I realized that I wasn’t tapping into all of my strengths (#competencies and #energizers). I missed leading people, strategizing, building, transforming, and optimizing across the entire organization, and at a larger scale. Since my clients were brilliant leaders, primarily in technology companies or in science roles, this excited me about working with them. It also made me realize how much I missed working in and with technology (although I always found a way to keep my hands in tech). I started my career as scientist and engineer, so it is part of who I am.

In order to tap into my experiences and strengths, I have decided to focus on Sullivan Global Consulting, a company that was formed over 10 years ago prior to moving to Ireland to support consulting work abroad. The name speaks for itself. I have worked in or with global organizations nearly all of my 25 year career, and I am beginning my third year of living in Mexico (for the third time since 2005). I am taking my experience in technology, business, and as a leader of teams in fast growing start-ups to large multinationals to offer #CxO level consulting or as interim CxO while bringing in the leadership development as a component of that work. What is CxO? It is an executive level/senior role and mindset, and in my case, depending on the situation, it could be #COO, #CIO, #CEO. I consider myself a hybrid of the three. Of course, I will still provide executive coaching to offer a full-suite of expertise to my clients because leadership development is an essential component of all roles versus addressed as a separate component. I enjoy working with men who are learning to tap into their emotional intelligence (#EQ ) as leaders and #women who are looking to step up their game – taking a positive, can-do, solution approach.

I am a proponent of having a solid #PMO and passionate about #Agile in the workplace – it’s a mindset and way of working and should not be tool driven. Ask my former employees at Reppify how Agile completely changed our culture in a positive way, improved transparency, accountability, communications, our level of productivity, time to market, and customer satisfaction.

I have already started down my new path and am loving my new journey. #Lovework as we say in the Strengthscope tribe!