DeBorah “Sunni” Smith is a coach and consultant who specializes in facilitating the growth, development, and success of chief executive officers and individuals in public life. The majority of her clientele work in corporate, public, and political arenas.

Sunni’s home base is in Los Angeles, California but her client list is national in both origin and scope. Her executive coaching and consultation capabilities include focusing on the following transformational topics:

 Leadership & Communication

• Coaching with an emphasis on inquiry & mastering authentic exchange & congruency
• Training “people prescriptions” - A method for increasing productive relationships
• Teaching vertical & horizontal “integrative speak” or “organizational fluency”

Agility & Change Management

• Promoting planning for career transformation, including entre & exit strategies
• Advocating Agility & intentional preparation for professional paradigm shifts
• Aligning personal principles with corporate, cultural, and systemic change

Productivity & Creativity

• Maximizing & managing tools of creative expression, self-reliance & accountability
• Identifying & differentiating goals & objectives through “affirmative self-assessment”
• Facilitating energy flow while establishing clear channels of creativity

Sunni has served as Deputy Director of Small Business in the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. She has consulted with and trained executives and managers of fortune 500 companies and non-profits, such as IBM, Genentech & Roche International, Interpublic Group, The Smithsonian Institution, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Film independent, KCRW, Southern California Edison, and Kaiser Permanente.

Having taught both in the undergraduate and graduate levels in higher education institutions, Sunni is periodically invited to guest lecture by a U.C. Irvine graduate management program and is recruited as a master trainer in principles of change management, cultural competency, as well as bias, inclusion, and equity.

In conjunction with the Department of Commerce, Sunni led international trade missions to South Africa and Columbia, South America. She has worked directly with national politicos, has designed marketing and promotional strategies for multi-million-dollar, fund development projects, and managed technical implementations while tracking quality assurance and performance measures. Currently, she teaches law in an adjunct capacity and looks forward to completing a certification in Coaching Super-Vision in the spring of 2021.

Certification

• Professional Certified Coach, ICF
• Conversational Intelligence® (CIQ)
• Management Path Instructor, Peter Drucker Institute
• Mediation & Conflict Resolution
• Emotional Intelligence
• Team Development Coaching
• Communications Law (American Bar Association)

Education

• Master of Laws, Public Policy, Georgetown University Law Center
• Juris Doctor, Communications Law, The Catholic University of America
• Master of Science in Rehabilitation, Virginia Commonwealth University

Practice Areas

• Executive Coaching
• Leadership Development
• Coaching Super-Vision
• 360-Degree Feedback
• Career Transition Coaching
• Conflict Resolution
• Team Coaching & Development

Affiliations

• Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) Adjunct Faculty