The Leaders

The team volunteering to enable the change makers of the world

Catalyzing World-Changing Nonprofits Since 2006

The Coach Initiative bridges two worlds: elite coaching expertise and passionate nonprofits ready to amplify their impact.

Born from a bold vision in 2006, founders Bobette Reeder, Donna Steinhorn, and Guy Stickney created a pathway for experienced coaches to serve organizations that transform communities but lack resources for professional development.

With seed funding from the Harnisch Foundation and guidance from industry leaders, we began by empowering Stand Up for Kids leadership through targeted coaching. This successful model has since helped hundreds of nonprofits worldwide elevate their vision, strengthen their teams, and multiply their impact.

For nearly two decades, we've remained committed to a simple truth: when nonprofit leaders receive world-class coaching, communities thrive.

Our Mission

The Coach Initiative offers coaching support to exponentially expand the positive global impact of projects that focus on the betterment of the human condition and on uplifting the human spirit. Because of our firm belief in the coaching process, we know that projects supported by coaches will have an even greater positive impact on the world.

Our Vision

The Coach Initiative looks to a future where every not-for-profit organization with the purpose of making a positive impact in the world has the support of a professional coach to enhance their contribution toward safer, healthier, happier, more productive global citizenry and the protection and care of our planet.

Our Board

Executive Members

Terri Hase

Terri Hase, our current President, is a grounded, realistic individual, with a talent for making the seemingly impossible possible. She has been called an ‘iron first in a velvet glove’, due to her no-nonsense, cut-to-the-chase style.
Terri Hase, PCC, IAC-MC | LinkedIn.

Bobette Reeder

Bobette Reeder is a past President and founder of The Coach Initiative. A Master Certified Coach and a past president of the International Coach Federation (ICF). A coach since 1995, Bobette has had extensive and varied experience serving in the international coaching community. She was on the ICF Board of Directors for 10 years, served on several ICF conference teams in both the U.S. and Europe, and initiated and facilitated the organization’s Global Forum. She was the 2004 recipient of the ICF President’s Award and has been the focus of numerous media articles and interviews. Along with Donna and Guy, she is a co-founder of Conversation Among Masters.

Bobette has been happily married for 50 years (really!) and has two married children and five magical grandchildren, plus Murphy the wonder dog. Her personal and professional style are all about having fun and seeking the positive side in everything life brings. A favorite quote: “Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can” –Danny Kaye.

Donna Steinhorn

Donna Steinhorn is current Past President and founder of The Coach Initiative and also founder of Coaching to Success and co-founder of Conversation Among Masters. She is the former Executive Vice President for CoachVille. https://donnasteinhorngroup.com/about-donna/

Terri Hase

LuAnn Buechler

LuAnn Buechler, known as the “Little Spark,” is a Business Coach, Master Trainer, Transformational Speaker, and Past President of The Coach Initiative who helps entrepreneurs create joyful, values-driven businesses through passion, people, and process. https://luannb.com/luanns-bio/

Additional Board Members

Dr. Cheryl Clark

Dr. Cheryl Clark is internationally recognized as a leader in Correctional Education and Treatment Programs and an expert in Synergetics and substance abuse treatment. She is the principal author of DOING LIFE! A Life Skills Program for Recovery From Addictions® and SMART Choices: A Guide for Making Choices That Work.

PhD dissertation: 12* of Freedom: Synergetics and the 12 Steps to Recovery

Co-founder of DOING LIFE!® International Inc. and Social Synergetics, LLC

(Retired) Director of Shock Incarceration and the Willard Drug Treatment Campus (DTC) for the New York State Department of Correctional Services (NYS DOCS).

Shock Incarceration, a documentary is about the transformational work that Cherie Clark co-created for the prison system in New York state.

Don Maruska

Don Maruska founded and was CEO of three Silicon Valley companies and a venture investor earning a National Innovator Award. He now serves as a Master Certified Coaching helping leaders and teams succeed. https://www.DonMaruska.com

Neil Alcala

Neil Alcala is a Coach Initiative Past President and CEO of DirectPay. Neil Alcala has worked in the eCommerce industry for over 18 years and in that time has transformed DirectPay from a home-based business to an enterprise with thousands of clients.

Utilizing his degree in Engineering and extensive experience with workflow and organizational processes, Neil has succeeded in supporting a wide variety of business types in increasing productivity with payment processing systems designed to meet their specific needs.

DirectPay remains dedicated to the idea of a client-centered approach to business support, building sustainable relationships with coaches, speakers, information marketers and other service professionals all over the world.

Nikki Anardo

Nikki Anarado is a certified relationship coach, social strategist and matchmaker helping high-achieving women in helping professions build healthy, intentional connections through emotional clarity, confidence, and the Prepare to Be Pursued™ framework.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikkianarado/

Chinmai Swamy

Chinmai Swamy is a board member, award-winning author, international speaker, and creator of Authority Launchpad and Expert Economy Engine. He helps professionals repurpose their existing skills and experience into profitable online businesses.

With a Master’s degree in Satellite Communication and Space Systems from the University of Sussex, Chinmai began his career as an IT consultant in London. After seven years in the corporate sector, he chose to leave and build an independent path.

Since 2012, Chinmai has published four books, spoken in over 14 countries, and helped thousands of professionals rebuild their lives with greater confidence and control. He has developed proven business and mindset systems including High Point Selling, ATM Profit Machines, 3C Coaching Systems, Quantum Footprints, and Life By Design OS.

Since 2023, he and his family have been living the Wealthy Nomad Life, working globally while travelling and experiencing different cultures, people, and ways of living.

Administrators

Laurie Milazzo

Laurie Milazzo has served as our dedicated Program Director since 2012. As such, Laurie is responsible for numerous essential activities and responsibilities that keep The Coach Initiative operating, from processing pro bono coach and nonprofit applications to matching organizations with the right coach to scheduling monthly board meetings and taking meeting minutes, to ensuring that feedback is collected after coaching engagements end.

The success of The Coach Initiative would not be possible without Laurie’s dedication and commitment. Thank you, Laurie, for always keeping us on task and for being the reliable hub through which so many of The Coach Initiative’s endeavors flow.

Susan Chapman

Susan Chapman is a virtual assistant/project manager. She has supported CAM (Conversation Among Masters) since 2008. Susan is a recovering engineer and enjoys using her techie skills to help people connect.

Advisory Board

Eva Wong

Eva Wong is the creator of a series of charity programs named as “Heart Chorus”. These programs have been run for 20 years and benefited almost a million of people in many countries and regions such as China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Canada. She is very passionate in coaching, training and philanthropy. Eva was born and educated in Hong Kong, and with her post graduate degree from Australia. Eva Wong is the first person brought coaching into China and author of several coaching related books including The Power of REN.

Kanu Kogod

Kanu Kogod 2Trained as an anthropologist, organizational development consultant and master certified coach with global work experience, Kanu Kogod started her own consulting firm, Bridges in Organizations, in 1987. Kanu co-designed and for over nine years facilitated Leadership Alchemy, an award-winning nine-month transformational leadership development program at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Her clients include the World Bank Group, the National Park Service, Merck Pharmaceuticals and the International Red Cross.

Kanu addresses everything from cultural collisions to culture change in order to successfully impact a leader’s performance and job satisfaction as well as the performance and satisfaction of the people they lead. She uses a holistic approach—language, body, emotions and spirit. That means helping leaders with the tools they need to design conversations, build leadership presence and raise their emotional intelligence so that they can achieve the outcomes they desire in their organizations, communities or in a larger political arena.

Madeleine Homan Blanchard

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a Master Certified Coach for The Ken Blanchard Companies®; a cofounder of Blanchard® Coaching Services; and a co-creator of the Coaching Management System, Blanchard’s Internet platform that supports large-scale coaching initiatives. With her deep understanding of human behavior and her humor, she inspires leaders to use coaching concepts to increase their effectiveness in their professional and personal lives.

Madeleine has more than 27 years of experience in the coaching profession and specializes in consulting with companies that want to establish a coaching culture. She can design large-scale implementations, provide mentoring and executive coaching, and teach leaders to leverage the best of coaching technology. Her areas of expertise are leadership presence and effectiveness, self-awareness and impact with others, and strategic focus. Madeleine is a coauthor of Blanchard’s coaching skills program, Coaching Essentials®, and the books Leverage Your Best, Ditch the Rest: The Coaching Secrets Executives Depend On; Coaching in Organizations; Leading ata Higher Level; and Coaching for Leadership: The Practice of Leadership Coaching from the World’s Greatest Coaches.

A pioneer in the coaching profession, Madeleine was a senior leader and founding advisory board member of Coach University and a founding board member of The International Coach Federation.

Prior to her career at The Ken Blanchard Companies, she founded Straightline Coaching, a company devoted to the success and satisfaction of creative geniuses. She spent two years as the director for a coaching program that was rolled out to 2,100 individuals at Goldman Sachs.

Madeleine received her Master’s of Science degree in Neuroleadership from Middlesex University and her Bachelor’s degree in Theater and Performance Studies from Georgetown University. She is a Certified Mentor Coach and a graduate of Coach University.

Jory Des Jardins

Jory Des Jardins has invested over 20 years into launching, building, and scaling disruptive media, digital communities, and emerging tech companies. Today, she serves as CMO of Community-as-a-Service platform Countable.

Jory pioneered social marketing as Co-Founder and President of BlogHer, a media marketplace representing a community of thousands of digital influencers and creators. She was the primary evangelist of social influence to agencies and brands and grew strategic partnerships with top advertisers and revenue partners. She led the operational transition into the more data-driven, performance-based campaign model that underpins today’s playbook for influencer marketing.

Later, she scaled the marketing organizations, and the developer, founder, and customer communities for Ethereum venture studio ConsenSys and AWS Startups. As an operator, her passion is developing the strategy, partnerships, tools, positioning and teams necessary to scale and serve business communities, be they enterprises, brands, digital influencers, entrepreneurs, developers, content creators, local merchants, or “gig” professionals.

As an investor Jory is passionate about making capital funding and business building resources available to talented, underrepresented founders. She has advised dozens of startups, currently The @ Company, a privacy protocol that enables consumers to own and control their own data. As VC in Residence at the W Fund, she focuses on “Democratizing Tech” that makes marketplaces, tech services, and business opportunities available to underserved communities. She has advised scaling startups in digital media, consumer marketplaces, eCommerce, Blockchain/token-based economies, and AR/VR/MR. Among the companies she has formally advised are PracticalXR, AIKON (cross-chain cryptowallet), Lifescape, and the women entrepreneurs' network SheWorx.

A former book and magazine editor and blogger, she writes two biweekly newsletters:

This Woman’s Work (https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/this-woman-s-work-6684620255760932864/), which explores tech trends and culture, and PAUSE (https://jory.substack.com/), personal essays on tech, marketing, fairness, and hormones.

Sandy Vilas

Sandy Vilas is one of the pioneers of the coaching industry, having been involved at the inception of Coach U in 1992. Sandy trained with the founder of Coach U, Thomas J Leonard. He began a full-time coaching career in 1994 and built the largest coaching practice in the world. Having built a successful coaching practice, Sandy started to look for avenues to share what he had learned in an environment that offers the highest quality of coach training available. In 1996, he purchased Coach U, and under his guidance, CoachInc.com, which encompasses Coach U, Corporate Coach U and its affiliates in Europe, Singapore, Japan, and Australia, has evolved to become the largest and most respected coach training company in the world. Sandy, now enjoying retirement, loved supporting entrepreneurs and professionals in dramatically increasing their business and enhancing the quality of their lives.

Ruth Ann Harnisch

Ruth Ann Harnisch is an American investor, activist, philanthropist, writer, and coach. A former news anchor and radio talk-show host, according to Forbes she was one of the first women to anchor evening news and had an award winning career in radio and print media. Her on-air reporting for WTVF-TV in Nashville, Tennessee resulted in an Emmy nomination, after which she opened a pro bono coaching practice as a professional coach. Harnisch founded and is president of the Harnisch Foundation, through which she founded programs such as Awesome Without Borders, SupporTED,[3] and Funny Girls. Among other grants, the institution has funded the formation of the coaching department at McLean Hospital and the journalism departments at Kennesaw State University and Baruch College. Earning the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Coaching in 2016, the year prior MSNBC named her one of 11 women's rights activists you should know.

Nancy DeMaio

Nancy has over 40 year’s experience in the environmental, health and safety field. She is a Certified Industrial Hygienist (CIH), Certified Safety Professional (CSP) and a Certified Professional Environmental Auditor (CPEA). Professional memberships include the American Industrial Hygiene Association, the American Society of Safety Professionals, and the Institute of Internal Auditors. She has recently become a volunteer for the Safety for NonProfits (S4NP)organization.

She has held various EHS leadership roles within several major Pharma/Biotech corporations, building capabilities to identify, assess and manage safety and health risk. Her most recent position has been with a major Pharma/Biotech corporation overseeing Environment, Health, Safety and Sustainability worldwide for it’s Research and Development operations.

Her experience also includes providing health and safety consultant expertise to a large variety of private companies and government operations. This expertise and guidance was provided both through her own consultant company, and earlier in her career with the Federal OSHA Consultation Services and NYS Occupational Safety and Health Program.

Nancy’s passion is protecting workers and improving safety and health.