About Kathleen
Kathleen Woodhouse is the Managing Director at Woodhouse Partners, focused on increasing leadership and organizational capability to drive business results. A former Fortune 50 executive, Kathleen understands the challenges of managing in a complex, ever-changing environment, and served as an executive leader in multi-billion dollar business units.
Her expertise is working with leaders and their teams to create an environment where people excel. Kathleen’s hands-on approach ensures that clients get a realistic assessment of strengths and opportunities, and the actions required to achieve higher levels of performance. Kathleen is a member of the Forbes Coaches Council, and a Guest Lecturer at the Harvard Business School. She is Hogan-certified, and uses this assessment and an array of other tools to provide client feedback.
Kathleen is direct, insightful, results-oriented, and holds clients accountable for their commitments. Her work has proven to be effective at multiple levels in the organization, and across multiple functional areas. She coaches C-level clients and their successors, and has a passion for developing women and high potential talent.
Her clients include technology, legal, healthcare, financial services, pharmaceutical and materials executives. She has worked closely with business leaders in the US, Canada, China, India, and Europe.
Prior to launching Woodhouse Partners and Nova Leadership, Kathleen was Corporate Vice President of Human Resources at Advanced Micro Devices, and held executive HR leadership roles at Dell, Inc., living in both the U.S. and in Europe. Kathleen now lives in Austin with her husband and two children. She holds both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from the University of Texas.
Generous reflections from Kathleen’s clients
“Woodhouse Partners helped us look at the HR function in a new light. With Kathleen’s insight, our business and people objectives are now much more aligned - and we have the tools and processes in place to support our team. She has been a valuable resource for me, and for my leaders. Kathleen’s breadth of experience, practical knowledge and hands-on partnership make her an asset to our firm.”
“Kathleen has been instrumental in helping me focus on specific areas for growth, and has highlighted my strengths in a way I’d not previously considered. With her guidance, I’m now putting focus on new areas on how I manage my business. My coaching expectations have been wildly exceeded.”
“When my organization told me that I would be working with a professional coach on a monthly basis for a year, my presumption was that there would be 12 wasted hours of my life that I would not get back. But after more than a year working with Kathleen, I have been proven very, very wrong. Kathleen has a perfect blend of IQ and EQ and her instincts and insights, honed from many years working as a professional herself and gleaned from her other clients’ experiences, have helped me navigate innumerable straits this past year. I ALWAYS come out of calls with her with new paths to try or potential solutions that I never would have thought of on my own.”
“I have had the great opportunity to partner with Kathleen in a number of roles and she is seen as a voice of reason and is a true trusted confidant and mentor/business partner. Kathleen has an uncanny ability to quickly assess a situation (business environment or team) and helps to clear the path by applying practical and immediate actions to optimize business impact. Kathleen is an end to end thinker who strategizes on the front end and sees things through to completion, all while bringing an open-minded, global perspective to ensure that new perspectives are heard.”
“I have worked closely with Kathleen and value her skills as a business person and human capital consultant. She has the ability to link business strategy to practical people plans in a way that yields tangible results. Kathleen is a valuable partner to the executives and managers she serves.”
“Kathleen’s coaching skills have assisted greatly in my development as an Executive. Despite initial skepticism, I found it easy to candidly communicate with Kathleen when discussing my strengths and areas of opportunities. This ease of communication was paramount to making the coaching exercise a success. This, coupled with her deep experience and general interest for me and my day to day issues made for a very positive experience. I would recommend Kathleen to anyone seeking to improve their leadership and general skill set.”
