Beckie Thain-Blonk
2018 Ivey MBA Alum! An With over 12 years of management consulting, coaching and organizational leadership experience, Beckie partners with ambitious professionals to market themselves as top candidates so they can land incredible jobs that excite and challenge them.
Professional Background
Beckie’s corporate career spans industries including insurance, oil and gas, technology, consumer packaged goods, banking, mining and education. As a management consultant at KPMG, Beckie served Fortune 500 and public sector leadership teams to deliver high impact projects worth seven-figures in corporate strategy, M&A, operations, marketing and customer success. As Co-Founder and Chief Customer Officer at Prosper, Beckie spent three years developing a world-class platform and coaching service that was featured twice as Apple’s app of the day alongside LinkedIn Learning and Coursera and highlighted by the Wall Street Journal before it was sold in 2020. Beckie joined the acquiring organization, bluSPARC - a U.S. learning and development firm specializing in enterprise-wide leadership coaching - as Managing Director and led the organization’s development and launch of their flagship product - scaling the organization to seven figures in revenue in the first 12 months. Now, Beckie spends her time advising other startup leadership teams on growth strategy, organizational design, people leadership and talent development alongside coaching her own roster of one-on-one clients looking to transform their career and find and land a new role.
Career Highlights
Extensive business experience in management consulting, entrepreneurship and coaching.
Co-Founded & Managed a Startup - the first mobile coaching company featured by the Wall Street Journal and Apple; before it was sold, the platform was used by over 30,000 job seekers to gain the skills they needed to make their next career move.
Recruited Global Teams - led the national recruitment program at a Fortune 500 company and hired dozens of team members as a 3x startup founder.
Specialities
Career discovery, Career planning, Job search strategy, Networking, Personal branding, Resume development, Interviewing & storytelling, Negotiation, People leadership, Growth strategy, Org design
Liz Doyle-Harmer
Professional Background
Liz’s 20-year work experience crosses public relations, strategy, event planning, internet marketing, and entrepreneurship. She has coached established and emerging leaders and facilitated workshops in a broad range of organizations including Marsh McLennan, JP Morgan, Novo Nordisk, Google, RSA, Bank of America, Goodmans LLP, Lole, Hub Insurance, and Johnson & Johnson across various industries including Financial Services, Pharmaceutical, Legal, Technology, and Non-profit.
Prior to coaching, Liz co-founded Afterglow Health & Fitness, ranked Best Yoga Studio, by BlogTo, and co-hosted The Afterglow Podcast, recognized by Toronto Life as one of “Five Toronto-made Wellness Shows to Add to your Queue." Through the podcast, she has hosted important and timely conversations with some of Canada's most notable female leaders including Samantha Nutt, Measha Brueggergosman, Andrea Menard, Erica Ehm, Perdita Felicien, and MLA Audrey Gordon on diversity, equality, sustainability, and personal growth and leadership.
As a Transformational Leadership Coach and Facilitator, Liz supports individuals and organizations in developing effective and engaged leaders and teams that thrive in a complex, diverse, and unpredictable world.
Career Highlights
Built and sold a small business over a period of 7 years. Afterglow studio, a yoga and movement studio, was ranked one of Toronto’s Top Ten studios by BlogTo
BA from Western University, MBA from McGill University
Ranked Top 10% of Coaches for BetterUp Direct
Specialities
Career coach, leadership coach, inclusion + belonging, burnout + well-being, confidence, mental fitness + resilience, facilitation and workshops
Sara Scurfield
Professional Background
Sara is a seasoned professional with nearly two decades of business experience in digital and retail across the UK, Canada and the USA. Sara spent the last 13 years building her career and coaching skills at Google in both Sales and Partnerships Marketing as well as an internal coach. During her Google tenure, she coached over 200 exceptional leaders, honing her skills with more than 100 hours of coaching training. Recently, Sara has transitioned to coaching and consulting full time. She is currently running a women’s leadership program for high performing women at Google called “LEAD” and runs a series of sales workshops at Pinterest focused on storytelling. She also has a thriving coaching practice with a mix of industries and leaders.
Overall, her goal is to better design her life around creative meaningful work, swinging a variety of sport racquets and cheering loudly in cold arenas for her two hockey playing sons.
Sara is a seasoned professional with nearly two decades of experience in digital and retail across the UK, USA and Canada. Her mission is to foster and support unapologetically unique, inclusive and brave leaders to make the workplace better for everyone.
Career Highlights
Currently running a women’s leadership program for high performing women at Google called “LEAD”
Currently running a series of sales workshops at Pinterest focused on storytelling
Specialities
Career transitions, Finding your North Star, Personal branding and owning your story, Authentic leadership and managing teams, Burnout, Breaking down barriers
Shar Banerjee
Professional Background
Shar’s corporate career spans industries including Technology, Training, Financial Services, Real Estate Development and Environmental sustainability. Most recently, during her time as the Head of Global Sales at Lillio (tech), Shar developed teams, systems, and processes that enabled the 5-person company to grow to 200+ people and lead revenue from $10k to $100+ million. During this time, she interviewed 1000+ people, hired 100+ people, and promoted 50+ to senior leaders. Previous to this, she consulted for a global asset and software company and managed a portfolio of $50M. Prior to that, as the Director of Business Development for a Global Training company, she was responsible for creating sustainable revenue streams.
The hallmark of her corporate career is underpinned by revenue creation, sustainable growth and strategic innovation.
Her guiding belief is that great businesses with extraordinary bottom lines are the byproduct of unwavering people development.
With 20+ years of consistent revenue success leading individuals and transforming teams to exceed expectations and results, Shar partners with organizations with proven and creative leadership development for extraordinary individual performance and organizational revenue WOW.
Career Highlights
Business leader for 10+ years, including Head of Sales & Business Development for 2 organizations
Specializes in Software-as- a-Service (SAAS) Technology leaders/companies - strategy, sales, marketing and customer support.
Recipient of Starter Company Plus Grant for innovation excellence
Podcast Host of “Books That Built Me” - a podcast for leaders
Specialities
Leadership development programs for individuals & teams, executive coaching (from an ex-executive with a DEIB lens), networking, negotiation, storytelling, sales development, revenue operations and personal branding