Today, we're chatting with our guest, Mr. Aaron Trahan. Aaron's career began with a rapid ascent into leadership. Early in his professional life, he found himself navigating the challenges of leadership, often described as streaking through the proverbial fire holes. By the age of 30, Aaron had secured a senior executive leadership role, helping lead a billion-dollar publicly traded company, a remarkable achievement that came with its own set of challenges. With early success came many mistakes and failures, which taught Aaron the invaluable lesson that continuous self-improvement is crucial for sustained success. As Aaron reflects, success has a way of breeding complacency. He had to accept the fact that what got him here won't get him there. It required leaving his ego at the door and stopping avoiding the development areas and the weaknesses that needed attention and refocusing on becoming a better leader.

Visit the C4C website to gain full access to the transcript, show notes, and guest links. Coaching 4 Companies

Today, we're flying into Rockford, Michigan, in the USA, and reviewing a new book from our guest, Nora Bouchard. As a master-level coach, Nora is highly skilled in creating opportunities for C-suite and other senior executives to discover personal solutions to their leadership challenges. Nora enables emerging leaders to be more effective as they transition from doing to leading. She begins by creating trust with each leader through an easy-going, comfortable dialogue, ensuring coaching goals are in alignment with the organization's direction. She works with the leaders to create new mindsets and behavior changes necessary to achieve those goals. To ensure sustainable long-term progress for the individual and the organization, Nora capitalizes on the leader's innate strengths, personal values, and personal commitment to success. M. Nora Bouchard, as you will often read about, is an accomplished executive coach with more than 25 years of experience.

Visit the C4C website to gain full access to the transcript, show notes, and guest links. Coaching 4 Companies

Today we're flying in to Dubai and catching up with our guest, Mr. Tim Beattie. Tim is the co-founder of Stellafai, an outcome coaching platform and operating system to connect product sales and customer success teams. Tim advocates for changing traditional consulting models, which he believes are broken. Instead, he envisions a shift towards enabling services where asynchronous coaching empowers teams to become self-sufficient and continually improve. He has over 20 years of experience driving transformation at global organizations, having consulted at PwC, IBM, Deloitte, and BAE Systems before serving as the global head of product at Red Hat Open Innovation Labs. Under his leadership, Stellafai has disrupted the consulting model and enabled boutique consultancies to scale and help technical teams in the cloud infrastructure space articulate and accelerate their impact through measurable outcomes.

Visit the C4C website to gain full access to the transcript, show notes, and guest links. Coaching 4 Companies

Hello and welcome to our very first podcast episode of 2026.

As is now tradition, we're kicking off the year by looking back—highlighting the very best conversations from 2025. This episode is a curated journey through the ideas, insights, and leadership lessons that defined the past year, featuring one standout guest from each month.

I'm in the host's seat solo for this episode, reconnecting us with these remarkable leaders and thinkers and reflecting on the conversations that continue to shape how we think about leadership, learning, resilience, innovation, and the future of work.

So, let's rewind the clock and revisit the voices that made 2025 such a powerful year for the podcast.

Visit the C4C website to gain full access to the transcript, show notes, and guest links. Coaching 4 Companies

Today we're flying into Copenhagen and chatting with Camilla Calberg, an experienced transformational coach. Camilla has worked as an experienced corporate advisor for BP, Shell and IBM, leading large scale transformation projects, helping these companies to build market platforms and their employees to embrace new working processes. Since 2016, Camilla has been an independent advisor to the pharmaceutical industry through Calberg Consulting, taking on communication and interim leadership positions and advising on leadership best practice. In all these roles, she has delivered and achieved major change. Having discovered that divorce is the second highest stressor a human being can experience, Camilla has devoted her life to being a full-time coach.

Visit the C4C website to gain full access to the transcript, show notes, and guest links. Coaching 4 Companies

Today, we're back in the city of London and chatting with the director at Periwinkle Consulting, Mr. Simon Copsey. Simon is on a mission to help organizations understand and unwind complex, cross-functional obstacles, enabling happier staff to deliver better software to customers sooner. Simon's career has taken him from being a developer in the trenches to helping various organizations take pragmatic steps from the place of chaos and paralysis to one where it becomes a little easier to see the woods for the trees. Coaching at the organizational level, Simon promotes lasting organizational change, requiring us to find and replace downward spirals with virtuous cycles. However, as Simon says, organizations are complex, and no single person can see everything. Failing to tackle these downward spirals can lead to pains across the organization and, in particular, within IT. Failing projects, increasing costs, and reducing trust within the business, as well as ongoing attrition.

Visit the C4C website to gain full access to the transcript, show notes, and guest links. Coaching 4 Companies

Today, we're back in London, and we're connecting with our guest, Varuschka Nagesar. As Varuschka shares, her journey has been anything but traditional, and it's this diverse tapestry of experiences that fuels her passion for empowering high-achieving individuals, particularly those navigating transformation. Today, we're chatting with Varuschka about authenticity, values, courage, and resilience, all of which she has demonstrated on her journey from South African lawyer to global executive to freedom-driven empowerment coach; the journey truly unfolds as a masterclass in reinvention. During our conversation, we dive into the mindset shifts and personal awakenings that led Varuschka to pivot away from high-powered roles at Accenture, Google, and DHL to become a guide for others navigating major career transitions. The lessons she learned from working across continents help leaders tap into their true north, that inner compass that guides decisions aligned with values, purpose, and fulfillment.

Visit the C4C website to gain full access to the transcript, show notes, and guest links. Coaching 4 Companies

Today, we're back in Lisbon, Portugal, and chatting with Gestalt coach Anil Erkan. Anil has over 25 years of corporate experience, and this includes international coaching roles since mid-2021. His clients include executives from Google, American Express, BP, Mars, AT&T, and other Fortune 500 companies. He has contributed extensively to leadership programs, as well as culture change projects, and voluntarily coaches young talent leaders. With almost 2,000 hours of coaching experience, Anil has a background in internal audit and risk management from his tenure at Arthur Andersen, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Citibank.

Visit the C4C website to gain full access to the transcript, show notes, and guest links. Coaching 4 Companies