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Who We Are
We’re leadership strategists for professional women. When you partner with us, you decide where you’re headed next and design a custom roadmap that gets you quickly moving in the right direction on a well-mapped route. With our proven process you’ll have the edge in navigating any heart pounding, knuckle-whitening hairpin turn whether it’s in your career or in your life.
Our core skill lies in our ability to deliver cutting-edge leadership experiences that literally change lives. We have a thorough under-standing of the impact of change, both planned and unintended, on the mind, body and soul of individuals and organizations and we incorporate that knowledge into everything we do. By working with us, you become expert at creating change that you want, handling change that you weren’t expecting, and in heading your life in your direction of choice.
 Denise Brouillette, MBA
President and Founder, The Innovative Edge
Creator and Director, Hairpin Turns
Contact Denise
Bio 
When she's not cliff jumping, backpacking into the wilderness, or training for an outdoor challenge (this year it's climbing Mt. Rainier), Denise can be found engaged in another inspiring activity: supporting her clients as they take bold leaps in their own personal and professional lives. Why? Because Denise believes that by defining one's own version of success for each leg of life's journey, there's nothing a person can't do successfully. This philosophy reflects Denise's own personal quest and asks, "How far would you go if nothing were standing in your way?" As founder and president of The Innovative Edge, and the creator and director Hairpin Turns, the Edge's women's division, Denise works side-by-side with individuals as they find that answer for themselves.
Denise knows what it means to have a vision and follow it. After an early career in Boston as an associate director for continuing medical education within the Harvard Medical School system and vice president of a Boston educational consulting firm, she moved to San Francisco with her family and founded a leadership development company that for more than 15 years has been designing and delivering leadership development experiences that transform lives.
As a professional coach since 1993, Denise has been assisting people in becoming more confident, focused, intentional leaders who are well-aligned with what matters most to them in life. Individuals hire her when they are mapping a strategic course for their future, designing a personal or professional change and want to successfully manage the transition process, and when they are moving up the organizational leadership ladder and need to think strategically, build teams, and influence and negotiate skillfully.
Whether it's through a leadership program or with executive coaching, Denise connects with people at a core level; her unique process helps people identify their deepest aspirations, match up their visions to big picture goals, and design the roadmap that gives them the practical means for achieving what they're up to next in life. To quote Elaine Fortier, a close associate and one of Denise's coaching clients, “Denise is a genius at getting you quickly to the heart of a matter. And that's what makes her and her process so extraordinary.” Anne Gilsten of New York says, “In her work, Denise masterfully leads people to quickly identifying true values, dreams and desires that are near and dear to them but may have been lost over time.”
Denise received her MBA from Boston's Simmons School of Management, holds a BS with honors from Boston University, is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach through The Coaches Training Institute, San Rafael, CA, and is certified in a variety of leadership 360 and interpersonal assessments, including emotional intelligence. Denise and her work have been written about in the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, ABCNews.com, Women.com, the Arizona Republic, the Christian Science Monitor, the San Francisco Business Times, and Graduating Engineer. She is a dynamic speaker and has presented at a number of professional conferences.
Her clients represent global and industry-leading organizations from both the not-for-profit and the profit sectors, Fortune's 500 and 1000, and list of 100 best places to work, a host of smaller companies, and hundreds of individuals and small businesses who have sought her out for her programs in leadership, seminars in Sedona, and for her exceptional executive and leadership coaching.
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 Ruth Varney, MA
Vice President, The Innovative Edge
Director, Leadership Initiatives
for The Innovative Edge
Contact Ruth
Bio
Ruth passion for adventure – traveling the world, competing in triathlons, climbing Half-Dome, preparing to summit Mt. Rainier ¬– coupled with her innate understanding of what makes people tick, is what makes her such an extraordinary leader. She is personally and professionally recognized for her ability to listen, inspire and create an environment of enthusiasm, collaboration and commitment. She has depth and insight into people and organizations and challenges them to think big, think differently, and reach for the next level of success, much like she does in her own life.
With over 15 years of global leadership experience in both line and consulting positions, Ruth has managed and led teams for mid to large organizations through significant change and growth; consulted to senior managers and executives within a variety of industries including high tech, finance, hospitality, healthcare and telecommunications; designed programs for mergers and transitions, virtual team effectiveness, systems and strategic thinking, cultural change, and leadership transformation; and coached executives, leaders, change agents and individual performers to help them get the results that were most important to them and their organization.
In her years with EDS Asia Pacific supporting their global leadership development and organizational change practices, Ruth was recognized for successfully transitioning and integrating a thousand-person organization into EDS New Zealand; and as an expatriate made a significant contribution to U.S. leaders in helping them understand what it takes to lead effectively in a global organization.
Ruth earned her Masters in Organizational Management from the Fielding Graduate Institute, gained her business coach certification from Corporate Coach University International, has completed the MIT core course in organizational learning, and is trained in change management, cultural alignment, mergers and transitions, and a variety of 360 and interpersonal assessments.
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 Debra Scates, MBA
Associate Coach, The Innovative Edge
Bio
Debra Scates brings to coaching over 20 years of experience in Fortune 500 companies as well as a unique perspective and skill set for executive and leadership coaching. She is an executive with a proven track record of strategically driving world class products and services that deliver business success, and she is a certified coach in professional practice since 2003.
Debra combines her expertise in leadership and management skills with her excellence in coaching; in her practice she moves quickly to identify the political landscape, what the client needs to do differently for success, and challenges the client to rapidly move toward their desired results.
Debra holds an MBA and a BSC in Finance from Santa Clara University. She is certified by the Coaches Training Institute as a Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC), and is a member of both the International Coach Federation and the Professional Coaches and Mentors Association. She is professionally qualified to interpret the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and is certified by Management Research Group in their Strategic Directions® suite of leadership products, including their 360-degree leadership assessment, the Leadership Effectiveness Analysis®.
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 Joanne Brem, BS
Associate Coach, The Innovative Edge
Bio
Joanne Brem is a professional coach who brings seasoned, hands-on expertise to the field of leadership development. Joanne's background includes 17 years of corporate experience, where she achieved great success selling in the information technology industry, with the Burroughs Corporation, Honeywell Information Systems and the Amdahl Corporation. Her last ten years were with Amdahl where she sold in the IBM plug-compatible mainframe computer market. She was a consistent Summit Award winner, and in her last year was rated #2 in the country with over $30M in sales.
As a top-performer in this extremely high-paced, competitive environment, she cultivated the inner capacity, key attitudes, resourceful perspectives and practices that sustain the optimal mental, emotional and physical state, all of which were needed to meet the constant intensity and demands of her work and exceed her objectives year after year. In essence, Joanne learned and integrated into practice the principles and dynamics of sustainable high-impact performance and life/leadership mastery, which form the philosophical foundation of her leadership coaching approach.
Seeing a need for the expertise she had garnered through her experience and success, Joanne earned coaching credentials as a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC) in a premier coaching training organization, the Coaches Training Institute. Joanne is also accredited as a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with the International Coach Federation of which she is a member. She is qualified to administer the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and offers an interview-driven 360 assessment. Joanne graduated with high honors from Arizona State University with her BS in Psychology and a minor in Business Administration.
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