Gary Cohen

BIO Gary B. Cohen | Executive Coach, Author, Founder

Built for action. Grounded in real experience. Focused on what moves leaders—and organizations—forward.

If you're a senior leader, you don’t need more theory. You need a place to think, to be challenged, to slow down and see clearly. My work is about helping high-performing leaders become even more effective by asking better questions, aligning with what matters, and scaling themselves as their context gets more complex.

I bring 30+ years of lived leadership—from co-founding and taking a company public, to building two coaching firms and advising over 140 organizations through inflection points. I’ve sat in the CEO seat with the board on one side, 2,200 employees on the other, and the weight of scale, pace, and ambiguity in between. I know what it means to lead through fog, to navigate politics, to grow faster than your systems—or yourself—are ready for. That’s the space I coach in.

What I believe

• Leadership isn’t about having answers—it’s about asking the right questions.

• The biggest constraint in any system is often the leader’s mindset.

• You can’t scale your company if you haven’t scaled your inner game.

• Culture is shaped by your smallest consistent behaviors—especially the unspoken ones.

Coaching isn’t about fixing. It’s about pattern recognition. It’s about surfacing the assumptions underneath decisions and redesigning the way leaders show up—on purpose.

Who I work with

My clients are often “Achievests”—CEOs and executive leaders who’ve outgrown the playbook that got them here. They’re smart, fast-moving, and still feel like something’s stuck. Maybe they’re holding too much. Maybe they’re tired of being the bottleneck. Maybe it’s time to become a different kind of leader—one who catalyzes rather than controls.

Whether it's a founder stepping into a truly strategic role, a CEO preparing their next generation of leaders, or a senior exec navigating complexity and contradiction at scale—I help them shift from high performance to deep presence, from doing to leading, from friction to flow.

How I coach

I don’t do “templates.” I use tested frameworks, real-time feedback, and insight-oriented reflection. You’ll leave every conversation with more clarity, a better question, and a next action. I work in long arcs—rooted in your business reality and your personal growth edge.

I ask questions that go a layer deeper than expected. Not to catch you off guard, but to bring forward what’s already in you—just beneath the surface.

Clients say I lead with warmth, curiosity, and directness. That I bring rigor without rigidity. That I help them see the system and their place in it. That I don’t let things slide—but I also know when to hold space instead of rush the insight.

What shapes me

• Founder & former CEO: Grew ACI Telecentrics from 2 to 2,200 employees; took it public on NASDAQ.

• Managing Partner: CO2 Coaching, working with clients from Intel and Unilever to scaling entrepreneurs.

• Author: Just Ask Leadership (McGraw Hill)

• Educator: Harvard Business School OPM, Aspen Crown Fellow, trained in Forum Sherpa, Vistage, and psychodrama-based coaching

• Practitioner of real-world leadership: Outward Bound board member, multiple-time founder, and someone who’s done the deep personal work to be present, not perform.

What’s next

If you’re looking for a coach who can track both strategy and soul—who knows what it’s like to sit in your seat and isn’t afraid to name what’s not working—I’d be glad to connect. Coaching with me is about alignment, accountability, and transformation that actually sticks.

Because when leaders shift, organizations shift.