Yana Blackwelder, MA, PCC ICF is an award-winning Learning and Development executive with over 20 years of international experience and expertise in leadership development and coaching, training design, and culture change interventions. She has worked with over 500 senior leaders and teams across diverse global corporations and sectors, including financial services, consumer products, pharmaceuticals, technology, NGOs, and academia. Yana is recognized for her expertise in cross-cultural communication, delivering leadership coaching programs, training curricula, and blended online learning solutions. She is an expert in developing senior and high-potential leaders, increasing employee engagement, and delivering high-performance outcomes. A result-oriented, mission-driven self-starter, she is a strategic business partner with leadership experience, organizational skills, business acumen, an entrepreneurial mindset, and strategic thinking in program delivery, design, content creation, and program management.

Yana is currently leading the CEO peer advisory group effort in NYC and advises senior leaders in the US and internationally. She recently served as a Talent Development Executive at Bank of America (BofA), delivering evidence-based executive coaching to senior banking and functional leaders (CEOs 2-3 levels deep) and high-potential leaders across the enterprise. She extensively utilized psychometric assessments, collected and analyzed stakeholder data to create customized leadership reports, and developed comprehensive plans for growth and improvement. Yana also led the design and delivery of innovative learning programs for coaches, HR partners, and business teams.

Before joining BofA, she founded the Global Coach Institute and was also an Adjunct Professor at New York University, teaching coaching courses to seasoned professionals and graduate students. As a leading provider of innovative coaching programs for executive teams at Coca-Cola HBC, Yana led a team that achieved a 10% decrease in sales team turnover and a double-digit increase in engagement, linked to a 35% rise in productivity. In this engagement, she co-designed a successful coaching culture transformation strategy for over 300 senior managers in collaboration with the HR leadership team. She conducted senior leader coaching engagements to improve leadership skills, EQ, communication, performance, and diverse remote team management.

In her work with INSEAD, Yana partnered with HR Leaders, international teams, and senior managers at leading global organizations, including the World Bank, IFC, BAE Systems, Nestlé Purina, Pernod Ricard, and the World Economic Forum. Her assignments included evidence-based executive coaching, group facilitation, action learning & simulation, work with 360-degree stakeholder feedback, Hogan assessments, and individual and group coaching.

Yana served as the Director of Strategic Partnerships for the International Coaching Federation NYC Board of Directors for five years. She was the Nominating Coach for the ICF International Prism Award in 2016 and received the ICF Chapter Global Forum Award in 2019. She also presented at numerous conferences internationally.