Ann Whelehan Smego

Founder and Principal

As executive coach and consultant, Ann Whelehan Smego works with successful leaders and teams to create strategic, positive and lasting behavioral change. She is based in the Greater New York Metro area and her clients work across functions, in several industries, and in enterprises of varying sizes. She seeks to help leaders articulate their vision, develop an implementation strategy, and align key stakeholders to achieve their desired future. She is passionate about working with motivated leaders and teams seeking to build ethical and values driven corporate cultures, to communicate clearly and powerfully, to value and manage culturally diverse workplaces, and to develop leadership competency across the organization.  She enjoys coaching executives, emerging leaders, newly promoted leaders, leaders who are transtioning for lateral development, and newly hired leaders to continue to develop their leadership skill and capacity.

Leadership Experience

Beginning her career in the corporate world, Ann has extensive experience as a successful leader in Fortune 100 companies, now known as Verizon, rising to senior leadership as managing director from beginning her career as a high potential leader. Her broad general management experience includes leading and working with all field and technical operations as well as staff and corporate functions.

During a time of significant corporate and industry transformation, Ann directed teams in leadership development, organization development, and significantly, was selected to create and lead the Office of Values and Ethics reporting to the CEO and Board of Director’s Audit Committee. In this role, she made valued strategic contributions internally to the corporation and externally, to ethics organizations across the country. She has been a public speaker on the national level on leadership, strategy, and building ethical corporate cultures, and has taught at two universities on these subjects as well.

Education and Training

Ann is trained and certified as an executive and organizational coach by the Columbia University’s Coaching Certification Program. She also holds a Master’s degree in human resources and organization development from American University, a BA from Fairfield University, and has successfully completed executive education programs including the University of Virginia’s TEP program. She is committed to continuous professional development and is certified in all the key assessments including:

• Hogan Assessments
• Emotional Social Competency Inventory (ESCI by Hay)
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator – Step I and II (MBTI)
• Neethling Brain Inventory (NBI)
• Culture in the Workplace (CWQ)
• Kolb’s Learning Styles Indicator (LSI)
• Strong Interest Inventory
• Thomas Kilman Inventory (TKI)
• Belbin Team Report
• Career Anchors