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Kathleen Dockry

Professional Expertise

Kathy is a seasoned business leader and highly experienced lawyer who partners with already successful high achievers who enjoy challenging themselves. She works with boards, CEOs, senior executives, and partners in large companies and professional firms to build strong leadership.

As a coach, Kathy focuses on accelerating the success of talented clients who are:

  • being groomed for larger roles
  • leading organizations through significant transitions such as mergers, new strategic directions, or changes in business culture
  • assuming new roles with critical responsibilities

Kathy has extensive business experience globally and has lived and worked in both North America and Europe. Initially a skillful trial attorney, she transitioned out of law and into a wide range of senior management positions and multinational project roles. Her particular strength was as a turnaround leader, someone who energized management teams and created a sense of purpose and achievement. Kathy’s corporate career culminated when she was President of Burmah Castrol Holdings, the $1 billion North American holding company for the various Castrol oil and chemicals businesses.

Kathy blends her deep understanding of the business world’s complex challenges and politics with humor, warmth, and an energetic results-oriented style. While providing support and guidance on real-time management challenges, she also holds clients accountable to their broader leadership visions. Clients cite Kathy’s prior management experience as bringing a deeper dimension to her coaching work and compare working with her to having a trusted advisor focused on their success. Her clients are in sectors as diverse as energy, finance, consumer products, technology, manufacturing, management consulting, and law.

Recent Coaching Assignments

  • The CEO of an oil and mineral interests company who assembled a new high-performing management team and led his company to record growth
  • The COO and President of a diversified financial services and products firm, to better lead a creative growth strategy in a maturing industry and to prepare for CEO succession
  • The CFO of one of the world’s largest communications network services provider, focused on building bench strength and capacity during a time of rapid growth
  • The US head of biopharmaceuticals division of global pharmaceutical company to prepare for succession into larger roles by strengthening his leadership team, delegating more effectively, and preparing his successor
  • The incoming EVP and General Counsel of a $27 billion international consumer products company, looking to re-align and re-energize his department as it becomes more strategic
  • The COO of a rapidly growing mid-stream natural gas company, preparing to become CEO in the next several years
  • A C-level executive at one of the largest US independent power producers, who is preparing for larger roles and developing a strong relationship with the Board
  • A global practice leader of a premier international management consulting firm who advanced his leadership initiatives and positioned himself for increasingly visible assignments
  • An SVP and functional head of a European finance company, building a high-performing organization that can add competitive business value
  • An SVP of a well-known global IT and business process solutions company, tasked with tripling the size of one of its most profitable business lines
  • The newly-hired SVP of a large diversified energy company charged with growing its non-utility businesses
  • The Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, coaching senior-level executives in the EMBA program as they apply their learning to real-time issues in their jobs
  • The headmaster of one of the oldest and most elite boarding schools in the US, strengthening relationships with the board and alumni while leading a major capital campaign

Education and Professional Affiliations

  • J.D. with honors, Rutgers University School of Law
    • Editor-in-Chief, Rutgers Law Review
    • West Publishing Company Corpus Juris Secondum Award for the most significant contribution to overall legal scholarship
    • Morris Gann Prize in Evidence
  • B.A. cum laude, Duke University
  • Independent study in English Literature at University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
  • Certificate in Leadership Coaching, Georgetown University
  • Member of the International Coach Federation
  • Completed Goodstone/Blaqwell Developing Lawyers as Leaders training
  • Trained in Hogan instrument