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Meet our Coaches

The Center for Liberated Leadership provides executive coaching to leaders in contexts as varied as higher education, K-12, health care, small business, non-profits and more. 

Contact us to explore how working with one of our coaches can accelerate your professional goals and help develop sustainable work practices.

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Annmarie Caño

Senior Executive Coach

Annmarie Caño is a clinical psychologist and executive coach with experience in leadership roles at private and public universities. She focuses on empathy, healthy relationships, and mindfulness for coping with chronic stress and illness. Drawing from her Latina and first-generation college experiences, she supports leaders in personal, systemic, and structural changes to liberate the workplace from harmful practices. She uses a liberation and decolonial lens in leadership and is currently working on a book project on Latin American liberation approaches.

Lisa Dunnigan

Senior Executive Coach

Lisa Dunnigan is a Leadership Transition Coach with over 20 years of experience in higher education and Fortune 500 companies. She helps leaders navigate senior leadership complexities and invisible transitions. With certifications in Hogan Leadership Assessments, MHS Change and Influence Style Indicators, and as a DDI Master Facilitator, Lisa's approach emphasizes the leader's experience at the heart of their leadership. With an MBA in organizational leadership, she has worked in various industries and served on nonprofit boards.

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Jennifer Mitchell

Executive Coach

Jennifer Mitchell, with 20 years of experience in higher education and small business management, offers coaching to help leaders define their leadership style and personal success. She is a Board Certified Coach, certified Executive Coach, and Career Coach, with a focus on goal achievement, self-regulation, sustainable health practices, and emotional resiliency. With a Master's in International Public Relations, she specializes in leadership development and crisis management. Jennifer is trained in Reiki II, Jin Shin Jyutsu, and Herbalism.

Shawn
Nealy-Oparah

Senior Executive Coach

Shawn Nealy-Oparah, Ed.D., is an innovative somatic abolitionist and trauma-responsive educator with over 20 years of experience in teaching and leadership. A former teacher and vice principal, she supports urban school leaders in developing holistic and humanizing practices to transform teaching and learning. Shawn is passionate about the quality of human connection, understanding relationship legacies, and the power of emotional intelligence. She is an experienced leadership coach and member of the Center for Executive Coaching.

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Julia "Chinyere" Oparah

Founder & Executive Director,

Lead Executive Coach

During the past three decades Chinyere has dedicated herself to developing and embodying a new way to lead that fosters joy, creativity, resilience and peak performance for leaders and the communities they serve. As an executive coach, Chinyere combines an equity and trauma-informed lens with mindfulness and proven leadership toolkits from the Center for Executive Coaching, to accelerate transformative change for her clients and the organizations they lead. Her deep humanity and compassion, combined with an orientation toward action and results, helps the leaders she works with to realize unimagined confidence, impact and balance.

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