Bio
Shannon is one of the first 100 people in the world to get her degree in positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. She was honored to be part of the US Army Resiliency training team where she trained over 1,500 soldiers. Her mission in life is to increase the well-being of every person she interacts with – through facilitation, consulting and leadership coaching.
She is an experienced organizational development and coaching professional with a passion for using innovative and empirically-based approaches to create resilient leaders, teams, and organizations. Her experience as a coach and facilitator spans mid and senior level clients across the private, public, and non-profit sectors. She has done keynotes for Google and GE and facilitated workshops in Kenya, Thailand, Haiti and Bangladesh. She is known for using innovative, engaging, and science-backed approaches to create resilient leaders, teams, and organizations. She finds a way to balance the rigor of the research with the warmth and play that make a training engaging.
She coaches and facilitates workshops on a number of leadership development goals ranging from career advancement, management skills, executive presence, leading as a woman, leading a global team and building strategic relationships. A number of her clients were promoted to senior levels in their organization at the conclusion of their coaching.
She graduated from Yale College with honors, has a Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) from the University of Pennsylvania (where she was also an assistant instructor) and a Certificate in Leadership Coaching, Georgetown University.
As a coach, Shannon has built her coaching practice on three pillars. First, clients need to increase their awareness of how their thoughts and beliefs impact their behavior. Significant changes in behavior and improved outcomes are more likely when grounded in these insights. Second, she leverages her decade long professional acting career to help leaders find their most powerful performance. Somatic (physical) coaching helps leaders understand how their physical presence impacts others and, by doing so, increase their ability to see how their ‘performance’ drives leadership and interpersonal effectiveness.
She is a contributor to the book, Positive Psychology at Work (Wiley) and the European Handbook of Positive Psychology. She co-authored and co-edited the book Character Strengths Matter: How to Live a Full Life. She conducts appreciative inquiry summits all over the country. In addition, Shannon translates her experience as a Yale trained actor to teaching presentation skills and executive presence.
She has a degree from Yale College, the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, coaching certification from the Georgetown Leadership Coaching program, and is an International Coaching Federation Professional Certified Coach.
She can be reached at shannon@shannonpolly.com.
