Enterprise Business Agility^SM

Kathy Marshak is a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Fellow and Agile Transformation Coach and instructor with ICON. For more than 20 years, she has helped clients improve how they deliver value to customers and stakeholders through the adoption and sustainment of lean and agile values, principles, and practices. She works with C-suites, leaders of teams of teams, and team members to guide the cultural changes required to make a new way of working stick. Kathy became a certified SAFe Fellow in 2019, an immense achievement. She became a SAFe Program Consultant (SPC) in 2012 and achieved the SPC Trainer (SPCT) certification in 2014. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kathy has leveraged her instructional design skills to create an engaging, interactive, and collaborative learning approach for online classes. Participants in her SAFe classes are happily surprised at the depth of learning, engagement, and fun they have. Prior to that, Kathy’s accomplishments include helping several organizations adopt SAFe and establish internal coaching programs and working with Dean Leffingwell, the creator of SAFe, to help a 3000-person program envision their SAFe transformation.

Kathy is grateful to her clients for their willingness to embrace change, run experiments, and collaborate to resolve challenges. 

With 25+ years of professional experience, James is a leadership coach and consultant specializing in organizational scaling, portfolio management, flow engineering, and enterprise agility. His experience spans coaching and training at large companies; typically those with an intention to engage VUCA and disruption by developing their innate agile capability to sense, respond, and adapt. Because most organizations are uniquely challenged with implementing systems-thinking and adaptive management at scale, James’ coaching style amplifies “starting where the client’s feet are” and dampens dogma or any focus on behaviors that do not “move the needle”. He successfully navigates the client landscape by applying his synthesized knowledge of leading methodologies. These approaches include SAFe(SPC4), Design Thinking, Cynefin, Model-Based System Engineering, Enterprise Business Agility (EBAS), and many more that might apply to the client’s “problem to be solved” and deliver a measurable result. Prior to consulting, James was a derivatives trader on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange specializing in financial futures and foreign currency options. Outside of transformational coaching, James enjoys film-making, option-pricing theory, lean cooking, queuing theory, and listening to music.

Kathleen is a Coach and Strategist with a passion for forming collaborative partnerships with organizations as they navigate change and expand their capacity to change well. Over the past 25 years, she has been privileged to help global organizations through major transformations including:  initial public offering, mergers, acquisitions, enterprise & business agility. Kathleen now works on the cutting edge of Enterprise Business Agility and values a highly collaborative approach that supports everyone as they adopt new ways of working to deliver faster, safer, and happier outcomes. She believes that engaging in thought-provoking and creative ways inspires individuals, teams and organizations to maximize their full potential, and that change is most effective when grounded in an organization's transcendent purpose and cultural archetype. She coaches at all levels, helping people to increase awareness, shift to a more holistic and creative mindset, develop transformational leadership approaches, change operating and organizational models, and adopt new frameworks that foster dynamic outcomes. Kathleen is a life-long learner and promotes continuous learning through experimentation and rapid feedback-loops. 

Karen personifies the profound drive for excellence she's paid to deliver. Business has a new language. A life-long student of Lean/Agile concepts and principles, Karen is a globally recognized translator for 21st century transformation. She leads tech startups from scratch to Silicon Valley, eases monolithic giants through the troubled waters of digital change, and rouses a new, essential positivism everywhere in between. With the imagination to challenge norms, Karen builds visionary leaders who fuse strategy with execution. Her passion for people and efficiency fuels the courage to break form and embrace the Lean mindset. Karen utilizes her unique background in Psychology, Engineering, and Computer Science, along with her deep knowledge of Agile and Lean, to adapt strategy and evolve operating models that are responsive to her clients, their clients' ever-changing needs and shifting landscapes. 

Karen is extensively experienced in Business and Leadership Agility and is a popular, passionate speaker who presents laser-focused, culturally sensitive, universal value. She is the author of highly successful proprietary Lean/Agile iterations for pan-agency growth across the Business, including Operations, IT Development, Product Development, and Mergers/Acquisitions. She has curated multiple cross-global projects and teams of 100 to 10,000+ for Fortune 500 companies in the Airline, Supply Chain, Financial, Insurance, Healthcare, Retail, U.S. and Foreign Government, Gamin, and Worldwide Publication sectors.

Karen is a joyously connected mother to Hunter, MacKenzie, and Devin, life partner to Dale, and dedicated servant to Charlie the English Doodle. Her family enjoys traveling abroad and time on the water. Karen is dedicated strongly to charitable efforts that focus on the inspiration and development of young people.