Human Resources Professionals: Insights & Resources

Best Leadership Coaches in Los Angeles

Ryan Stevens
September 11, 2026
All Insights
HR Professionals: Insights & Resources

Best Leadership Coaches in Los Angeles

Top Los Angeles Leadership Coaches

Los Angeles’ diverse business landscape—from entertainment and technology to healthcare, education, startups, and nonprofits—creates unique leadership challenges for HR professionals and People teams.

Effective leadership coaching can support manager development, succession planning, communication, team performance, retention, and organizational change, making it important to evaluate coaches based on their experience, specialization, coaching approach, and organizational relevance.

Digital Reference takes a contextual approach to professional credibility, combining research, transparency, verification, and authentic professional storytelling to help organizations better understand the people behind the credentials.

This approach gives HR professionals a more informed way to evaluate leadership talent and identify leadership coaches aligned with their organization’s needs.

🎭 Our Methodology: How We Built This List of Top Los Angeles Leadership Coaches

This list reflects research into leadership coaches serving professionals and organizations throughout the Los Angeles–Long Beach–Anaheim metropolitan area. Rather than simply highlighting well-known names, we focused on professionals demonstrating leadership expertise, specialized coaching capabilities, strategic thinking, and meaningful professional impact.

Our evaluation included:

🌐 Review of professional websites, coaching services, leadership programs, and areas of expertise

🧠 Research into coaches, founders, executive coaches, and leadership professionals through LinkedIn and public profiles

🎯 Evaluation of expertise in executive leadership, communication, team development, organizational transformation, and career growth

📊 Assessment of industries served, client backgrounds, coaching experience, and demonstrated impact

🤝 Consideration of each coach’s coaching approach, communication style, and ability to work collaboratively with leaders and organizations

Los Angeles’ leadership coaching landscape includes professionals with diverse expertise across executive development, communication, organizational transformation, entrepreneurship, team leadership, and career growth.

Digital Reference curated this list to highlight coaches whose experience, specialties, coaching philosophies, and professional impact make them noteworthy for executives, founders, managers, HR professionals, and organizations seeking meaningful leadership development.

🌟 Digital Reference’s List of the Best Leadership Coaches in Los Angeles

🟨 John Burt

Owner & Managing Partner of John Burt Leadership

John Burt brings extensive executive leadership, consulting, and international business experience to his coaching practice. His career includes senior roles with General Dynamics, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and IBM, where he worked with Fortune 500 companies and leaders across global markets.

🌐 Global Leadership: Brings decades of experience working across Europe and international business environments.

🏢 Enterprise Experience: Combines leadership and consulting experience with major organizations and complex business operations.

🧭 Purpose-Driven Coaching: Helps leaders develop greater self-awareness, purpose, influence, and team leadership.

His combination of global experience, enterprise leadership, consulting expertise, and coaching credentials makes Burt a distinctive leadership coach for organizations navigating complex leadership challenges.

🟨 Audra Bryant

Founder of Purpose Fulfilled, Inc.

Audra Bryant brings a distinctive approach to leadership coaching centered on resilience, empowerment, identity, transformation, and purpose. As a TEDx speaker, author, empowerment coach, and artist, she helps individuals and organizations turn adversity into personal strength and meaningful growth.

🎤 Speaker & Coach: Combines coaching, speaking, workshops, and organizational training.

🔥 Resilience & Empowerment: Helps leaders embrace challenges, build confidence, and lead with greater purpose.

🏢 Organizational Development: Offers individual and group coaching, workshops, keynotes, and leadership programs.

Her combination of personal transformation, resilience, creative perspective, and leadership development makes Bryant a distinctive coach for organizations focused on empowered and purpose-driven leadership.

🟨 Lee Povey

Founder of Lee Povey Coaching

Lee Povey brings a distinctive high-performance leadership perspective shaped by elite sport, entrepreneurship, and organizational psychology. As a former elite track cyclist, Olympic-level coach, founder, and entrepreneur, he works with leaders and founders navigating demanding, high-growth environments.

🏅 Elite Performance: Has coached Olympians and national champions while applying performance principles to business leadership.

🚀 Founder Coaching: Supports founders, executives, and high-performing leaders facing complex challenges and pressure.

🧠 Evidence-Based Approach: Combines organizational psychology, mindset training, honest feedback, and sustainable performance strategies.

His combination of elite coaching, entrepreneurship, evidence-based leadership, and sustainable performance makes Povey a strong fit for founders and organizations focused on high-performance leadership.

🟨 Jenn Gallardo Nicks

Career and Leadership Coach at Coach Grow Lead

Jenn Gallardo Nicks brings a strong corporate learning, development, and talent-management background to leadership coaching. With more than 12 years of corporate experience, she has led leadership and customer-experience programs serving more than 100,000 employees.

📚 Learning & Development: Connects leadership coaching with organizational learning and employee development.

👥 Large-Scale Experience: Brings experience designing and managing leadership programs for large workforces.

🎯 Executive Development: Helps leaders strengthen their capabilities, reach their potential, and become more effective.

Her combination of corporate experience, talent-development expertise, and leadership coaching makes Nicks a strong fit for organizations seeking coaching aligned with broader HR and leadership-development strategies.

🟨 Darlene Fountaine, MBA, PCC

Executive Leadership Coach & Founder at Your Go-To Coaches

Darlene Fountaine brings more than 25 years of experience in education, leadership, personal development, and organizational service to executive coaching. A PCC-certified coach with an MBA from USC, she helps emerging and next-level leaders prepare for greater responsibility.

🏢 Leadership Development: Helps leaders strengthen awareness, communication, decision-making, and readiness for expanded roles.

🎓 Education & Governance: Draws on extensive education leadership and board experience, including her role as Chair of the Board of Trustees at Vistamar School.

🧠 Context-Driven Coaching: Takes an individualized approach that helps leaders examine patterns, assumptions, blind spots, and perspectives shaping how they lead.

Her combination of executive coaching, education leadership, governance, and context-driven development makes Fountaine a strong fit for organizations developing emerging leaders and strengthening leadership pipelines.

🟨 Bobby Canosa-Carr

Founder & CEO of Enlighten Leadership Coaching

Bobby Canosa-Carr brings a distinctive education, school leadership, mindfulness, and transformational coaching background to leadership development. A former teacher and principal, he has led public-school turnarounds and brings extensive experience in education and organizational leadership.

🏫 Education Leadership: Supports school leaders, principals, education executives, and mission-driven organizations.

🧘 Mindful Leadership: Incorporates mindfulness, purposeful listening, reflection, and awareness into leadership development.

🔄 Transformational Coaching: Uses inquiry, curiosity, challenge, and experimentation to help leaders change behaviors and perspectives.

His combination of education leadership, mindfulness, adult learning, and transformational coaching makes Canosa-Carr particularly relevant for organizations seeking leadership development grounded in reflection, behavior, and practical experience.

🟨 Danny Herrera, Ed.D.

Founder & Leadership Coach at Urban Leader Coaching

Dr. Danny Herrera brings a specialized education leadership, research, and executive coaching background focused on diverse urban educators and school leaders. A certified executive leadership coach and former school leader, he has nearly two decades of experience in Title I schools across Los Angeles and Milwaukee.

🎓 Strong Academic Credentials: Holds degrees from UC Berkeley, California State University, Northridge, and the University of Southern California, including a doctorate in Educational Leadership from USC.

🏙️ Urban Education Leadership: Specializes in the challenges facing diverse leaders and educators in urban school environments.

🧪 Research-Based Coaching: Combines research, experiential learning, action research, and data-informed decision-making.

🤝 Mentorship & Cohorts: Supports leadership development through mentorship, peer learning, and cohort-based programs.

His combination of executive coaching, nearly two decades of education leadership, doctoral research, and urban-education specialization makes Herrera particularly relevant for organizations focused on principal development, leadership pipelines, mentorship, and inclusive leadership.

🟨 Adam Lurie

Founder & Leadership Coach at Adam Lurie Coaching

Adam Lurie specializes in leadership coaching for early-stage founders, combining coaching expertise with firsthand experience as a venture investor, co-founder, and CEO. His work helps ambitious founders navigate the personal and organizational challenges that come with scaling a company.

🚀 Founder-Focused: Works specifically with early-stage founders and high-growth companies.

💰 Investor & Operator Experience: Brings experience from both venture investing and building, fundraising, and scaling companies.

🧠 Personal + Business Growth: Combines inner development with practical leadership and business execution.

👥 Scaling Leadership: Helps founders address delegation, hiring, co-founder relationships, team alignment, and the transition from operator to leader.

His combination of founder experience, investor perspective, and leadership coaching makes Lurie particularly relevant for Los Angeles’ startup ecosystem and organizations helping founders become more effective leaders.

🟨 Julie Ha Truong

Founder of Leadership Savvy

Julie Ha Truong brings a cross-sector and systems-focused approach to leadership development, with roughly 25 years of experience supporting leaders and organizations across public, private, nonprofit, education, health, and community sectors.

📚 Leadership Development: Designs and delivers leadership programs while coaching and developing diverse leaders.

🌎 Cross-Sector Experience: Brings expertise across nonprofit, public, education, wellness, and private-sector environments.

🤝 Collaborative Leadership: Focuses on collaboration, organizational strategy, and systems change.

🎓 Strong Credentials: Holds a Master’s in Public Policy focused on management and leadership, is a CNM Certified Coach, and teaches at the MBA level.

Her combination of leadership development, cross-sector experience, coaching, and systems thinking makes Truong particularly relevant for Los Angeles organizations navigating complex people, community, and organizational challenges.

🟨 Dante Rosh

Founder of Dante Rosh Coaching

Dante Rosh brings a strong combination of leadership development, HR, career strategy, and organizational development to her coaching practice. With previous experience in HR and OD, she works with managers, directors, executives, and organizations navigating leadership growth and career transitions.

🎯 Leadership Development: Coaches leaders through promotions, transitions, delegation, decision-making, and team challenges.

🏢 HR & OD Experience: Brings firsthand knowledge of HR systems, talent development, and organizational leadership programs.

📈 Career Strategy: Supports professionals through career pivots, promotions, job searches, and major career decisions.

📊 Results-Oriented: Public client examples highlight leadership growth, stronger teams, promotions, and improved assessment results.

Her combination of HR expertise, organizational development, leadership coaching, and career strategy makes Rosh particularly relevant for organizations strengthening leadership pipelines and developing emerging executives.

🎥 Using Digital Reference to Find the Best LA-Based Leadership Coaches For Your Needs

Finding the right Los Angeles-based leadership coach means looking beyond credentials to find a professional whose experience and coaching approach match your organization’s needs.

The leadership coaches featured in this guide offer specialized expertise across executive leadership, startups, education, HR, resilience, communication, and high performance, giving HR professionals and People teams a range of options for developing emerging managers, executives, founders, and leadership pipelines.

Explore more from Digital Reference:

At Digital Reference, we help make that search more informed by providing greater context around a professional’s experience, accomplishments, expertise, and approach. Through structured information, verification, transparency, and authentic professional storytelling, Digital Reference helps HR leaders compare potential coaching partners and identify Los Angeles leadership coaches whose background and capabilities align with their organization’s specific leadership-development goals.

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