Leigh has over 15 years experience as a leadership consultant, working with a broad range of organizations and teams and their senior executives.  Her work includes design and delivery of large scale systemic leadership development programs, Top Team facilitations, executive assessment and executive coaching for senior level executives. 

Leigh’s coaching practice includes executives at the president and CEO level.  She integrates her coaching with team facilitation to maximize the benefits of all leadership consulting services.  Her work in Top Team facilitation focuses on setting the direction and strategy for talent development and succession planning initiatives.  She partners with internal stakeholders of talent and leadership programs to effectively cascade the leadership learning to global partners and functional areas of an organization.  Additionally, Leigh Kearney specializes in assessment for selection, assessment for development and team assessment.

Some of Leigh’s clients include Prudential Financial Services, Merrill Lynch, MedCo, Time Inc., First Data Resources, EMI Music, Burberry USA, Jimmy Choo, Office Depot, TRW, Maytag, GM, Aviva USA, Addleshaw Goddard Law Firm, Harvard and Stanford Medical Schools.

Before joining BeamPines, Leigh served as a Partner for Whitehead Mann Plc, a global leadership consultancy firm.  While at WHM she managed the assessment business for the US that included training many search consultants to contribute to the assessment process by adding benchmarking measures to the leadership competencies.  Prior to Whitehead Mann, Leigh was Vice President of Professional Services and co-founder of Summit Leadership Solutions, a small leadership services firm.  She contributed to the growth of that firm that resulted in it’s acquisition by WHM.

In addition, she worked as a Senior Program Consultant for the Center for Creative Leadership in Colorado Springs, CO for 10 years.  During her tenure with CCL, she served in many capacities including the facilitation of Leadership at the Peak (the senior executive development program), selection and supervision of the adjunct professional staff, custom client management as well as contributing as a co-designer of CCL’s Leadership and High Performance Team’s course.

Leigh received her Ph.D. from the University of Denver where her academic interests focused on counseling psychology as it applies to elite performance and the leadership of high performance teams.  Her research with Harvard and Stanford Medical schools looked at the impact of surgeon communication on the clinical and technical skills of the anaesthesiologist during an aesthesia crisis, allowing for the investigation of leader behavior on the team.  Leigh also earned a Masters of Science from the University of Colorado in clinical psychology.  Her undergraduate and additional graduate work concentrated on exercise physiology from the University of New Hampshire and the University of California at Davis.

When not traveling for clients, Leigh splits her time between New York City, Colorado Springs and Maine.  In her spare time, Leigh competes as a recreational athlete in ultra-endurance mountain biking events and Nordic ski events.  She spends as much time possible outdoors ocean kayaking, hiking and biking.