We are a deeply experienced team with a customized
commitment to your leadership development needs.
Leadership development is what we bring to the table. We’re not trying to do everything your organization might need. We bring decades of successful experience helping people become powerful, inspiring, and great leaders. If you’re interested in an organization dedicated to helping you solve your challenges to ensure you will continue to advance your company’s mission, business objectives, and success, we’re the leadership experts in high tech.
Our Approach to Leadership Development
The experience of watching people fully realize that they can achieve more than they thought and then shift to actually doing those things they hadn’t before imagined inspires and amazes us.
Our Specialties
The Avanti Team: Our Leadership
Rita Graziano, MA, CEO
Rita is CEO of Avanti Leadership Group. She has held multiple Director positions in Technology firms and has coached over 100 leaders.
Her passion for lifting leaders up includes increasing their professional satisfaction and confidence, as well as developing their leadership acumen. Her advocacy for all leaders and the potential of leadership to positively create both business results and inspirational work environments drives her passion. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Heather Payne, Client Relations/Accounts Payable
Heather is a Marketing and Administrative professional who brings attention to detail and customer service excellence to her role at Avanti leadership Group. Her past experience has been primarily in the tourism and recreation industries. Heather was born and raised in Los Gatos, California and attended Sierra Nevada College and the University of Nevada Reno.
The Avanti Team: Our Coaches and Consultants
Lori Addicks, Master Facilitator
An accomplished consultant, master facilitator, and executive coach, Lori is practiced in team development, as well as multi- generational diversity. She successfully led Coca-Cola’s impactful effort to design a process to attract and accelerate the development of global high potential GM talent. Lori is a sought-after and highly experienced speaker and calls both Georgia and Montana home.
Pamela Beatty, MA, Coach
Pamela Beatty’s experience of 30 years in organizational consulting, professional development training and human resources includes a broad knowledge of and practice in facilitating change processes, improving interpersonal communication and supporting leaders in implementing their organizational visions.
Pamela’s areas of expertise include team development, executive coaching, career management coaching, dispute mediation, public speaking and designing and delivering professional development seminars.
Pamela believes that we are all creative beings with the power to create lives we love living and she is committed to helping individuals and organizations achieve their highest and best aspirations.
Michele Caplette, PhD, Coach
Michele has more than 20 years success designing and facilitating leadership and change management programs. She is an executive coach and seasoned leader who as a director designed and facilitated innovative development programs for leaders at Applied Materials, including a worldwide leadership initiative aligning leadership with business objectives and results. Michele is extraordinarily grounded in the theory & practice of leadership and loves living in the SF South Bay.
Drew Daugherty, MBA, MA, Coach/Senior Facilitator
Drew has over 20 years experience as a consultant, coach, and line manager in leadership positions. He has worked extensively with many executives to maximize the impact of their leadership, and with their teams to achieve breakthrough performance through others.
The foundation of Drew’s coaching expertise lies in his extensive training and experience dealing with behavior change, combined with his practical experience as a results-driven senior executive in complex organizations.
Drew has advised and coached dozens of senior leaders in Fortune 500, medium-sized, and start-up organizations. Leaders have consistently appreciated his coaching style as “providing the right balance of challenge and support – combining helpful structure for accountability with open curiosity and insight to get to the underlying issues.”
Laura van der Sande, MBA, MSc, HR Consultant and Coach
Laura is an experienced HR Leader and Coach with a pragmatic and innovative approach focused on helping business leaders, small business owners and individuals achieve their potential.
She has an MSc in International HR and Organisational Behaviour from the London School Economics (LSE) and worked across a range of industries including high tech, automotive, creative, non-profit and education.
Laura has worked and lived in several countries and travels extensively. Her work focuses on leadership deveopment, cross-cultural management and communication, building high-performance teams, change management, and first-time managers.
Nancy Nadler, Leadership Coach, Organizational Consultant, and Facilitator
Nancy Nadler is a Leadership Coach, Organizational Consultant, and Facilitator with over 30 years of experience in dynamic high tech environments. Throughout her career, Nancy has collaborated with individuals, leaders, and teams to increase personal and organizational capability and success.
Specializing in Leadership Coaching, Organizational Effectiveness, Team and Management Development and Human Resources consulting, Nancy is known for being approachable and accessible with a communication and coaching style that is warm and humorous yet candid and direct. She brings a depth of organization experience to every leadership engagement and has a reputation as collaborative, creative, and able to foster change within individuals for lasting professional success.
With six years of non-profit experience in the areas of crisis intervention and conflict resolution, Nancy is a big picture thinker who brings strategic solutions to everyday problems.
Nancy has led key organizational efforts including corporate values identification, 360 degree feedback system design and implementation, management competency development, performance management system design, and all areas of HR business partnership. Nancy has managed re-organizations, downsizing efforts, and large scale organizational change programs and has successfully led many cross-functional and international teams. Nancy has managed Learning and Development groups, designing and leading training programs for all levels from new employees to senior management. She has facilitated business and strategic planning sessions, executive and management development, individual skill development, teambuilding, and provided organizational coaching and consulting at all levels of the organization.
Nancy has a BA in Secondary Education from the University of Houston and an MA degree in Counseling Psychology from the Professional School of Psychology, Sacramento. She is certified in a number of management and employee development training programs and has earned her Coaching Certification at the NLP and Coaching Institute of California.
Our Clients
Avanti Leadership Group specializes in working with global technology, biotechnology, energy, media, telecom and consumer products firms. Some of our current and past clients include:
Our Certifications
Avanti Leadership Group works with standard and custom assessments and learning programs; team members are certified in the following tools and programs:
- The Extraordinary Leader 360
- The DDI Leadership Mirror 360
- Linkage-LAI 360 Assessment
- Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument
- Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument
- Myers Briggs Type Indicator
- THT Intercultural Assessment
- Booth Task Cycle Survey
- Birkman Assessment
- Hogan Assessments
- DISC
- Social Styles
- DDI
- Achieve Global
- Situational Leadership
- Covey 7 Habits
- Targeted Selection (Behavioral- based Interviewing System)
Avanti Leadership Group recommends the Center for Creative Leadership 360 Assessment Suite, including:
- Benchmarks® for Executives™ (formerly Executive Dimensions) developing top-level leaders.
- Benchmarks® for Managers™ (formerly Benchmarks) assessing the lessons of experience.
- Benchmarks® for Learning Agility™ (formerly Prospector) discovering the ability to learn from experience.
- Benchmarks® by Design™
- Skillscope®
- Global6™