Athena Adkins

“Who do we Choose to Be?
This is the question that drives Athena and her work. Throughout her 20+ year career in the non-profit and philanthropic sector, her effort to leverage her experience and expertise and align her personal values with mission-driven organizations has led her to engage in deep, meaningful work at the intersection of organizational development and capacity building—where those ideas intersect with authentic leadership, intercultural organizational development, healing from trauma, and emotional intelligence. Essentially, she is a champion of the idea that it is not just “what we do,” but also “how we do it.”

As both the president of a woman-owned, minority-owned business, and as an executive coach, Athena brings deep leadership and management experience to all of her client engagements. Her experience leading teams—beginning at the University of Miami where she rowed stroke seat for their Division 1 program and led the team to an NCAA second place finish behind Navy, and culminating as a True North Leadership Fellow through the George Family Foundation—includes leading from the middle, motivating volunteer teams, coaching executives on balancing vision, team building and day-to-day operations, and building her own team of consultants—with varied skills, experience, motivations and life experience—to excel professionally and understand the power of culture and team. She is a values-led leader who understands when to deploy the tools of co-creation, coaching, and mentorship, as well as the power of stepping up and in during critical times to hold space, navigate through discomfort and uncertainty, and try to work in ways that honor people and evoke their best human qualities.

Athena has spent more than a decade building a successful private practice working for high-impact organizations—from small community-led nonprofits to universities and health care systems. She and her team are the “secret sauce” for their clients, co-creating processes to build capacity of both organizations and individuals. These include strategic plans, program development and evaluation, implementing DEI through intercultural organizational development, and working behind-the-scenes to help organizations understand and unleash the power of their stories in order to galvanize public and private support. Her superpowers include asking hard questions and not being afraid of the answers, seeking clarity, and breaking ideas down into foundation pieces in order to increase understanding—her own and her clients. Her favorite part of the work is the opportunity to co-conspire with smart, accomplished, fiercely principled people to create environments that let us all thrive.