Keynote Speaker
Marc Koehler
Marc Koehler is a former U.S. Navy Nuclear Submarine Officer, Best Selling Leadership Author, 35+ Year Sought-After Elite Leadership Expert and Founder of the Leadership Development and Research Firm Lead With Purpose
In 1988, Marc joined the U.S. Nuclear Submarine Force. The U.S. Navy invested $1 million dollars teaching him how to be a leader. Marc put that into use by leading 110 men, average age of 23, to operate a $1 billion dollar nuclear submarine on a variety of missions critical to national security.
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The Elite Leadership culture and environment that he was exposed to showed him exactly what it takes to build a high-performance team that can operate in a dynamically changing environment. After 6 years of being out at sea for 80% of the year, Marc made the choice to leave the U.S. Navy.
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Marc went to work for Honeywell where he learned how to read a profit and loss statement, put together big company strategic plans, and became a master black belt in Lean Six Sigma.
When his daughters were 6, 4, and 2, he could either climb Honeywell’s corporate ladder or be at every back to school night, choir performance, and soccer practice. He chose the latter and started his own one-man management consulting firm.
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Over the course of ten years, Marc was brought into numerous distressed companies as an interim CEO/COO. He developed a reputation as someone who could tackle the worst business situations. Marc has led many companies on the verge of going under back to profitability. It was during this time that Marc witnessed the power of the human spirit and the role of a leader to inspire and help everyone reach their full potential.
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Koehler realized that what the world needs isn’t more management systems – it needs more leadership.
“I realized that all humans crave simple messages that are meaningful to their lives, want to belong to something bigger than themselves, and get excited when they know they are making a difference to others in the world,” he says. This realization inspired him to completely rethink how to help engage, empower, and encourage employees to reach their full potential.
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He founded Lead With Purpose, a leadership development and research firm, where he took the over $1M in leadership training the Navy poured into him, in combination with his civilian turnaround experience, and distilled it into simple concepts and skills to create leaders at every level of an organization. Over 51,000 leaders have been developed through Lead With Purpose’s SHRM-accredited organizational leadership consulting, coaching, courses, and simple systems.
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Marc’s experience in both the nuclear submariner service, including receiving two Battle E’s over the course of his career, as well as the business world has led him to become one of the foremost experts on Elite Leadership – a needed, relevant, and achievable approach to leadership for this new, disruptive world.
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Today, Marc is a keynote speaker addressing audiences of up to 50,000, the best-selling author of Leading With Purpose, and the host of the Surfacing Leaders podcast where he tells the stories of leaders in unlikely places and the human spirit that drives us all.
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Establish Contact with Marc
Call (760) 585-4892.
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