Kelli Thompson is a leadership coach, speaker, and writer with over 15 years of experience in corporate America and over 10 years in leadership for financial services and technology organizations. Based in Omaha, Nebraska, she founded the Clarity & Confidence Women's Leadership Program, a nationwide, online leadership development program for women leaders. Through this program, she has coached and trained hundreds of women to trust themselves, lead with more confidence, and create a career they love. Her work has since been featured in HuffPost, Next Avenue, Working Mother, Thrive Global, Introvert Dear, HR Daily Advisor, LinkedIn, and via her blog and social media channels.
In November 2018, Kelli left corporate America to start her leadership coaching practice, but by July 2020, Kelli had lost over 80% of her income due to pandemic-related canceled contracts and events. Kelli used the gap in her schedule as an opportunity to pivot her business to focus exclusively on coaching women leaders. Through her years of corporate experience, Kelli recognized that there was a lack of training programs that focused specifically on women’s strengths and addressed the unique challenges they face in the workplace.
Even so, she was not aware at the time of how important this work would be in the upcoming months as women were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. Kelli’s coaching work focused on issues that include how to speak up at work, manage the extra workload that women frequently carry, set boundaries, and navigate career changes to find better pay and work-life balance.
The reinvention of Kelli’s business strategy additionally included offering a unique 8-week leadership program that focuses exclusively on the needs of women. Topics include discovering your leadership strengths, learning to trust your intuition, reducing workloads through delegation, and imposter syndrome. Unlike many traditional leadership programs, Kelli doesn’t help women conform to who their organizations want them to be. Instead, she helps them cultivate their unique gifts and talents so that they can show up as who they are meant to be.
Kelli asked two clients about what made her work different…
Client 1 said that Kelli’s program is the first she’s done that is based on intuition. “It's rooted in things that no one talks about in the business world,” she explained. This client went on to say that listening to her body helped her find the reason behind her lack of confidence and overcome imposter syndrome in the workplace. “This has allowed me to stand in my power and contribute my unique gifts at work. I am so much more confident,” she added.
Client 2 spoke about how Kelli’s program is the first to address important soft skills. “The [other] programs are just dry and nobody wants to talk about conflict and authenticity,” she explained. She added that Kelli’s leadership program relies on data to identify things that are proven to be problems for women. “That you [Kelli] build programs around and tackle,” she explained.
Kelli continues to teach women that trusting their intuition is the new competitive advantage in business. She has empowered her clients to speak up, make a career change, collectively negotiate over $30,000 worth of higher salaries, and do so without sacrificing their desired work-life balance.
Kelli Thompson won the Bronze Stevie for Mentor or Coach of the Year – Business in the 2021 Stevie Awards for Women in Business
Interested in submitting a nomination for the 2022 (19th Annual) Stevie Awards for Women in Business?
