Deborah Soule Esposito

Since 2000, Deborah Soule Esposito has served as a senior partner with Key Associates, Inc. in helping leaders and organizations improve and grow. Her focus is business assessment, action planning for results, performance management, leadership & team development, product development and certification of facilitators in Key Associates’ programs.

Deb spent 19 years at Eastman Kodak Company building knowledge in a wide variety of functional areas including operations, manufacturing, quality, HR, product development and project management, before turning her attention to global business leadership. Later she joined Eastman Kodak Company’s Management and Education Team as Manager of Program Facilitation and primary training facilitator for senior executive learning. In the first capacity her responsibilities were to hire facilitators, conduct training and work with program designers to continuously improve program delivery.

Deb supported several of Kodak’s executives with individual coaching and by facilitating their organizational strategy workshops. The skills developed during these three years carried into all subsequent assignments. In 1991-1993, Deb assumed leadership of three business units with $100M in revenue. Improving earnings to over 20% was the result of managing product portfolios, having the right reward systems, and developing global cross-functional teams who reduced new product development times by 25%.

From 1993-1997, Deb led a skunk works, which delivered inkjet consumables and assumed global leadership of the Company’s Storage business. Forty percent global factory share of CD-R media, high-end CD writers, large-scale optical systems and strategic partnerships were key success factors. She continued her corporate work as Executive Vice President of North American Operations for Essilor from 1997-1999. Using a “balanced scorecard” to align the group’s goals and measures, a stronger leadership team emerged with significant improvements made to customer service, costs and the balance sheet.