Marilyn Conner, MBA, DMC, ACC, CEC

Professional Commitment

I work with leaders throughout organizations to facilitate their leadership potential and strengthen their organizational capacity. My drive, education and experience serve to empower, inspire and energize the leaders with whom I work.

Career Highlights

Leader

Marilyn Conner has over 25 years experience in leadership in both government and not-for-profit environments. For the past 15 years, Marilyn has been the CEO of a not-for-profit organization. Marilyn built the organization from one that had failed its contract requirements; was in an unsafe building; and had lost program funding to one that has consistently achieved 100% provincial certification; is now housed in a state-of-the art facility for persons with disabilities and has increased its contract revenues by more than 500% since her commencement with the agency. She led a campaign that raised more than $1.5 million and facilitated the planning, design and construction of a barrier-free facility for children and adults who have disabilities.

In addition to her leadership role, Marilyn is also a Certified Executive Coach, a Management Consultant, and University Instructor.

Certified Executive Coach and Management Consultant

For the past five years, Marilyn has demonstrated leadership skills through the facilitation of several management consulting contracts on behalf of non-governmental organizations and for two provincial ministries. Work on these contracts involved financial, program and leadership assessment with a view to developing strategies necessary for developing organizational capacity. Through these experiences, she has developed insights into processes that serve to strengthen capacity and ultimately the viability and sustainability of such organizations.

Her deep passion for working with people of all abilities has served to strengthen individual and team potential. This has been achieved through executive coaching, leadership development and management consulting. Marilyn’s commitment to personal academic development has provided her with a solid understanding of business, organizational development and transformational and servant leadership.

To support her passion and belief in coaching, Marilyn became a licensed facilitator for Coaching Out of the Box®. She has essentially devoted her career to both supporting and inspiring people of all abilities to be the best they can be. Coaching is an extension to this work.

Consulting projects include:

	Comprehensive consulting project which focused on not-for-profit sustainability (2006).
	Complete organizational assessment of a large provincial organization (2007).
	Viability assessment of an organization in partnership with the Alberta Resource Centre for Quality Enhancement (2008).
	Management and administration review of a not-for-profit operating a business (2008).
	Review of government-funded community capacity building initiatives in the PDD Edmonton Region (2008).
	Feasibility study for child care services in Wetaskiwin, Alberta (2008).
	Strategic planning for provincial organizations.
	Coaching Out of the Box® training for the leadership teams of two organizations (2008/2009)
	Leadership training for a Leadership Caucus (2010).
	Legacy Leadership® training for two organizations (2010/2011).
	Executive coaching for leaders and entrepreneurs.

Educator

Since 2008, Marilyn has been teaching 3rd year Human Resource Management through the Bachelor of Applied Human Service Administration Degree Program at MacEwan University. Marilyn applies her coaching and leadership training to facilitate the learning of her students.

Education and Professional Designations

Marilyn earned a Bachelor Degree in Administration with Distinction and in 2006 she earned an MBA in Executive Management with a Specialization in Leadership from Royal Roads University (RRU) in Victoria, British Columbia. In 2007, Marilyn completed a graduate Diploma in International Management Consulting with Distinction, at the Grenoble Graduate School of Business, (GGSB), Grenoble, France.

In 2008, Marilyn graduated from the RRU Executive Coaching Graduate Certificate Program and in 2009 Marilyn achieved the Associate Certified Coach (ACC) designation from the International Coach Federation.