Biography
Steve Heller is a dynamic and committed Leadership Coach, who specializes in helping leaders achieve new levels of personal effectiveness. Steve is particularly interested in the power of clarity, consistency and constancy in driving performance breakthroughs in organizations. His clients have included corporate leaders, social entrepreneurs, public sector leaders, educators, non-profit executives, attorneys, scientists, coaching students and established coaches, in functional areas such as: Corporate Management, Sales, Human Resources, Finance and Administration, Marketing, Operations, Legal and IT.
Over the past 15 years, Steve has coached leaders at Verizon, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the Smithsonian Institution, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Departments of the Navy and the Army, the Internal Revenue Service, various agencies within the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), the George Washington University World Executive MBA program, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), the
Nuclear Energy Institute, the City of Alexandria (Virginia), the District of Columbia Bar, the National Cancer Institute, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), AARP, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the American Nurses Association, GMMB (strategic communications firm and advertising agency), Stewart Enterprises, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the San Antonio Credit Union (SACU), the Auto Care Association, the American Institutes for Research (AIR), the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Inter-American Investment Corporation, The JBG Companies, Capital Impact Partners, ICF International, The Democracy Fund, No Labels, Office of the Vice President (The White House), Healthy Democracy, Capital One, Inter-American Dialogue, Rock the Vote, Open Data Nation, Turner Construction, L’Oréal, MemoryWell, Entrada
ESL, The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, US World War One Centennial Commission, Point Breeze Credit Union, the Johns Hopkins University, Verisign, Intel, hotelAVE, Localized, Crowell & Moring, IBM, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Samsung and Run for Something.
In 2016, Steve played a key leadership role in the Georgetown University Leadership Coaching Program faculty’s delivery of a unique series of custom-designed leadership development workshops to White House Chiefs of Staff and Deputy Chiefs of Staff, White House Liaisons, and Civilian Agency Chiefs of Staff, at the request of the Presidential Personnel Office.
With over 30 years of industry experience and 15 years of coaching experience, Steve’s skills in successfully managing change in times of turbulent market conditions derive from real-world experience. Throughout his years in executive and line-management positions, Steve developed a reputation as a first-rate leader. He is especially effective at linking team behaviors to bottom-line goals and coaching individuals with a combination of honesty,
directness and a genuine commitment to their personal growth and success.
A member of the International Coach Federation (ICF), Steve served for many years on the Board of Directors of its Washington, DC chapter (including a term as its President) and holds an ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC) credential. He obtained his Certificate in Leadership Coaching from Georgetown University, and also holds a BSE degree from the Johns Hopkins University and an MSE degree from the University of Pennsylvania. A
lifelong learner, Steve has studied new leadership paradigms with Dr. Margaret Wheatley, adult development theory with both Dr. Otto Laske and the team of Dr. Barbara Braham and Chris Wahl, leadership agility with Dr. Bill Joiner, presence-based coaching with Doug Silsbee, growth edge coaching with the team led by Dr. Jennifer Garvey Berger, coaching leaders in complexity with Doug Silsbee and Carolyn Coughlin, the Cynefin™ framework for complex adaptive systems with Dave Snowden’s Cognitive Edge team and Clean Language with Marian Way.
Steve is certified and/or experienced in the application of a variety of assessment instruments, including PPI’s Clark Wilson series of 360 feedback surveys, the EQ Map emotional intelligence profile, the DISC personality inventory, Lominger’s Leadership Architect framework and Voices 360, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the Booth Leadership EQ 360 (LEQ), the Denison Leadership Development Survey, the Kouzes | Posner Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI), the Enneagram Type Indicator, the Team Dialogue Indicator, The Attentional & Interpersonal Style Inventory (TAIS), the Leadership Circle Profile and Leadership Culture Survey, the Leadership Agility 360 (LA360), TetraMap and Story Typing & Narrative Intelligence Tools.
After six years as an Adjunct Faculty member for Georgetown University’s Leadership Coaching Certificate Program, Steve served as its Program Director from January of 2015 through early 2017. He has been an occasional guest lecturer at the National War College, is a member of the team of coaches that provides professional coaching to TED Fellows, provides leadership coaching to Fellows at the highly regarded Halcyon Incubator and has coached graduates of Back on My Feet’s revolutionary program for supporting people
from homelessness to independence.
He is a Founding Member and served on the inaugural Board of Directors of the Georgetown ITL Network, a 501(c)(3) that supports faculty and graduates of the Institute for Transformational Leadership’s certificate programs. In addition, Steve is a member of the Fairfax County (Virginia) Communities of Trust Committee, a diverse citizen group focused on strengthening and building positive relationships between public safety agencies and the communities they serve.
Steve contributed a chapter titled “The Case for Cultivating Present-Moment Self- Awareness in Leaders and Coaches” to Christine Wahl, Clarice Scriber, and Beth Bloomfield, eds. On Becoming a Leadership Coach: A Holistic Approach to Coaching Excellence. Second ed. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
He resides in Lorton, Virginia (a suburb of Washington, DC) with his wife Joan, and has two grown children and four grandchildren, about each of whom he will proudly boast with the slightest provocation.