James P.

James Powell

5.0

(8)

Executive coaching for leaders building careers and lives they're proud of.

Co-Active Training Institute Logo

Studied at Co-Active Training Institute

humanKIND Logo

Hiring Manager at humanKIND

Successful clients at

+1

Not currently taking new clients

James’s Executive Coaching Qualifications

Coaches professionally

Experience level: Executive

James has helped clients get into these companies:

My executive coaching draws on 25 years working directly with founders, CEOs, and senior leadership teams across agency, corporate, non-profit, and entrepreneurial contexts. Most recently as VP Strategy at Blu Ivy Group, I led 20-person teams partnering with CHROs and senior executives at scale across employer brand and leadership development. As Global Head of Brand at WE Charity, I worked alongside the founding leadership team building brand architecture across 11 countries and 1,000 employees. As Director of Cause Marketing at SickKids Foundation, I led $57M+ in corporate partnerships with sustained 30% annual growth. Earlier roles include Director of Marketing positions at TVO, Rogers/Fido, and Virgin Mobile Canada. I've seen what happens when leaders fragment themselves to manage performance — when they lead from a curated version of who they are rather than the actual one. I've also watched what happens when they stop. The performance doesn't drop. It deepens. The team feels the difference. So does the leader. Coaching at this level isn't about more frameworks or more information — you have all the information you need. The work is making clear-eyed decisions from a place that actually agrees with itself. Head and heart in the same direction. Ambition and care as the same impulse, not competing forces. I work with executives who are ready for the version of leadership that's both more honest and more effective. CPCC-certified, iEQ9 Leadership & Team Development Practitioner, and founder of humanKIND. COACHING BACKGROUND Over 30 years of leadership experience across branding, marketing, product development, and organizational consulting — on both the client and agency sides, across for-profit, non-profit, and founder contexts. Since founding this practice in 2009, I have coached and partnered with more than 350 executives, leaders, entrepreneurs, and founders across Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, the United States, and South Africa.

James can help with:

AI Automation

AI Fundamentals

AI Strategy

Board Relations

Communication Skills

Decision Making

Leadership Development

Strategic Planning

Strategy

Succession Planning

Team Management

James also coaches for Leadership Coaching, Non-Profit Leadership, Communication & Public Speaking, and Life Coaching. View all.

About James

I did not come to coaching through a book. I came to it through a life. I learned to manage myself as a brand long before it was a career. When I moved into brand strategy as a profession, the work felt natural — because I had been doing a version of it for myself my entire life. For 25 years I made my way through that work — across agencies, corporate brands, non-profits, and founder-led companies, working with leaders across six countries — building a career on the very performance I had been refining since childhood. It worked. It also cost me more than I knew. What I had been carrying through all of it took me longer to recognize. I grew up as a closeted gay child in a fundamentalist Christian world. From as early as I can remember, I understood, at a level beneath language, that who I actually was could not be allowed into the room. The collapse, the unwinding of all that, is a longer story I tell on humankind.work. What matters here is what I came out the other side knowing.The deepest work in leadership is the same work in two places. It happens in the rooms, with founders, CEOs, leadership teams, when the conversation moves past the deck and gets honest. And it happens inside the leader, in the harder, quieter work of allowing yourself to actually be the person you are. Those are not two different jobs. They are the same job, in two rooms. That is what real leadership is. Strategy and skill don't close the gap between who leaders are and who they perform themselves to be. Honesty does — outside, with the team, and inside, with yourself. I'm CPCC-certified, an iEQ9 Leadership Practitioner, and the founder of humanKIND. Based in Toronto and Prince Edward County. My partner David and our shared life with our dogs Luna & Keystone are what help ground me while I do this work.

Why do I coach?

Because the gap I described above isn't theoretical for me. I lived it. I built a career performing a version of myself the world rewarded, until performance ran out of room. What I found on the other side of that wall, slowly, stubbornly, and mostly without grace, was the most counter-cultural thing I had ever done: allowing myself to be enough as the actual person I was. That work is not finished. I am still doing it. So is every leader I coach. I coach because I have watched, in hundreds of leaders, what happens when that gap closes. The performance does not drop. It deepens. The team feels the difference. The decisions hold. The leader, often for the first time in their career, recognizes themselves in their own work. The moment I keep returning to is small and recognizable. A leader stops mid-sentence. Says, more quietly than they were speaking before, "I haven't said that out loud to anyone." And then, having said it, finds they can think more clearly than they have in months. That moment does not get old. It is why I do this work. I sponsor in 12-Step recovery for the same reason. Sitting with someone through the most honest reckoning they will ever undertake, and helping them stay in it, is similar leadership work, in another room.

Work Experience

Verge Logo

Co-Founder

Verge

October 2025 - Present

Verge is a leadership coaching and development company built for high-performing men — executives, founders, and senior leaders who are succeeding on the outside while sensing something is missing on the inside. As Co-Founder, I lead brand strategy, program design, and the facilitation of Verge's inaugural cohort: a closed eight-week group of ten men, launching in Toronto in Spring 2026. Verge occupies a deliberately unclaimed space — neither therapy nor corporate wellness, neither self-help nor performance coaching. It is a sustained, expert-facilitated container where men can be known. The work is direct. The standard is high. The results are byproducts, not promises. I bring to this work a background as a Senior Executive and Entrepreneurial Leader, paired with credentials as a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC). My focus is grounded masculinity and integrated leadership — the intersection of strategic clarity and genuine presence. Verge is the first expression of a longer vision: a coaching company whose reach extends through live cohorts, a fables series for modern male leaders, and organizational leadership development. verge-men.ca

Blu Ivy Group Logo

Vice President, Product Delivery Manager

Blu Ivy Group

July 2022 - October 2024

Hiring Manager

Strategy & Implementation — Led enterprise strategy from diagnosis through execution, delivering operations and process structures to increase client satisfaction, delivery efficiency, revenue growth, and employee engagement. Led eOS implementation to align strategy/planning/delivery across BIG, consulting practice strategy & implementation standards, and firm-wide brand repositioning. Delivery & Advisory Leadership — Led a 20-person team of employer-brand consultants and trusted advisors, partnering with senior executives to deliver large-scale, complex engagements with consistency and impact. Creative & Brand Operations — Rebuilt creative services to support scale and profitability, aligning brand, process, and output across the organization. Launched Blu Thread Conversations, Canada’s #1 employer brand podcast and CHRO research white papers, to establish category leadership and expand market influence

foundation Logo

Director of Marketing

foundation

December 2017 - September 2021

Hiring Manager

Led the Cause Marketing team to leverage the SickKids Foundation’s award-winning brand to build & implement strategic partnerships with Canada’s top corporations and brands. - 30% revenue growth and raised tens of millions of dollars from FY2017-FY2021 - created and launched North America's most innovative Children's Hospital cause marketing campaign

WE Charity Foundation Logo

Global Head of Brand

WE Charity Foundation

December 2015 - August 2017

Hiring Manager

* Created the WE Movement, Canada's most-followed social enterprise, NGO, and charity, by defining, designing, and leading the organizations global multi-channel rebrand. Results: Flawless implementation across 11 countries, 1,000 employees, 12,300 schools, 12,000 retail locations, $5.5MM+ in-kind media, 1.4B earned-media impressions and 5MM+ social media followers. * Built a 'digital first' integrated marketing team and designed a cross-org implementation process to achieve brand amplification and fundraising development goals. Results: 31% y/y growth for brand-led integrated marketing campaigns. * Formed and led a B2B marketing partnerships team to amplify partner and WE Movement brand goals while driving sell-through for retail and loyalty & engagement charity-based initiatives. Results: strong y/y growth for all existing priority partners (Microsoft, RBC, Facebook, Walgreens, TELUS, Fossil) while onboarding explosive new partners like DAVIDsTEA, Nordstrom, 7 Eleven, Roots, CF, and Bloomingdale's.

TEDx Logo

Speaker's Coach

TEDx

December 2014 - May 2017

Admissions Committee

As part of the Programming Team for the annual TEDxToronto conference, my role is to help envision, curate and work with other members of the team to program the conference that delivers the spirit of TED and brings the annual theme to life. As a Speaker's Coach, I work directly with speakers to identify their topic, build their talk and develop strong performance skills to deliver an impactful and meaningful TED talk.

TVO Logo

Director of Marketing

TVO

November 2013 - January 2016

Hiring Manager

* Architect and leader of TVO's multi-platform brand identity overhaul from public broadcaster to digital learning organization. * Built a 16 person agile marketing and development team (strategy, design, advertising, product design, UI/UX, promotions, animation, events) to redefine, relaunch and digitize the TVO brand for donors, consumers, and government stakeholders. * Created, branded, and launched several new digital learning products for teachers and school-age learners RESULTS – Moved TVO to become the “most trusted”, “most educational” and most-watched media brand for children in Ontario. Moved TVO’s prime-time adult block to rank ahead of CNN and CBC Newsworld and all other non-sport specialty channels. Launched Canada’s first social network exclusively for teachers. Relaunched a digital homework help product that demonstrates improved EQAO math results for high school students. Thumbnail for Ontario Vignettes - Elizabeth-HD

humanKIND Logo

Founder & Leadership Coach

humanKIND

November 2009 - Present

Hiring Manager

humanKIND is a human-centred leadership coaching and advisory practice. I work with leaders, executives, founders, and teams who have achieved success but feel disconnected from fulfillment, clarity, or themselves. Much of my work focuses on moments of transition — burnout, change, reassessment, or quiet misalignment — when leaders know something needs to shift but aren’t interested in surface-level solutions. My work integrates leadership coaching and advisory support. In coaching engagements, the focus is on the leader — how they think, decide, lead, and relate — so growth is sustainable and aligned rather than performative. In advisory and consulting engagements, I partner more directly with organizations to help clarify direction, make decisions, and build toward specific outcomes using a human-centred approach. This work is grounded in direct clarity, responsibility, and fulfillment as alignment. It’s not about fixing people or prescribing answers. It’s about helping leaders see clearly enough to choose intentionally and act in ways that hold over time. Over the past two decades, I’ve coached and worked with over 350 executives, leaders, entrepreneurs, and influencers across Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, the UK, the USA, and South Africa. I’m a certified leadership coach, trained through the top ICF-accredited programs, including: • Coach U Leadership Coaching Program (2010) • CPCC – Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CTI, 2012) • Accredited Enneagram Practitioner (Integrative Enneagram Solutions, 2021) Fractional Advisory Areas of Specialization: • Organizational vision, mission, and values • Leadership transitions, restructuring, and alignment • Culture analysis and development • Operational planning and operational excellence • Not-for-Profit strategy, cause marketing and fundraising • Branding, advertising, and marketing strategy and implementation • Employer brand strategy and implementation • New business visioning, opportunities and start-ups Leadership Development, Brand Development and +3 skills

Crispin Porter + Bogusky Logo

Senior Strategic Planner

Crispin Porter + Bogusky

January 2008 - August 2010

Interviewer

Strategic Planning & Brand lead responsible for developing and implementing brand, communications and internal culture strategies. Coached and co-created with senior executives to assess, refine, and activate organizational vision, brand purpose, values and internal culture Clients Included: Best Buy Playboy Corus Entertainment - W Network, YTV, Cosmopolitan TV, W Movie Network, CMT, DUSK TV SCA Personal Care, North America Toys R Us Babies R Us Rexall

Rogers Communications Logo

Director of Marketing

Rogers Communications

July 2006 - February 2008

Hiring Manager

Led a dual-brand team of 15 with accountability for 55% of the national wireless business; $15MM non-media marketing budget across 500+ retail locations. Achieved the #1 wireless company position in Canada for 2006; beat company manager effectiveness norms by 20%. Partnership strategy wins (Toronto Maple Leafs, Rogers Cup, Toronto Raptors, Grey Cup) delivered $1MM+ in cost savings and 15MM new brand impressions for the wireless business.

Virgin Mobile Logo

Director of Marketing

Virgin Mobile

August 2004 - July 2006

Hiring Manager

Created and led brand strategy for the Virgin brand launch in Canada and South Africa — working directly with Virgin Group's senior leadership to establish brand architecture in two new markets within a demanding global brand system. Canada's second most hyped commercial launch: 155MM+ media impressions. Virgin's most successful international launch at the time. Launched 150 Virgin Mobile mini-store locations across Canada, increasing direct channel sales by 120%. Developed Virgin Mobile's loyalty and music strategy and brought Virgin Festival to Canada.

Education

Co-Active Training Institute Logo

Co-Active Training Institute

CPCC

2010 - 2012

University of Toronto Logo

University of Toronto

Honors Degree - Specialist in Management, Management

*Honours degree with distinction (finished within the top 10% of graduating class) *Dean's List *Dr. Stanley Ho Scholarship to study International Management in Hong Kong *Various entrance and in-course scholarships based on academic excellence

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James has helped clients get into these companies:

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James P.

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