Executive Coach | Organizational Psychologist | Author | Thought Leader

Dr. Gena Cox is an award-winning organizational psychologist, executive coach, and global thought leader who has spent over 25 years helping leaders elevate their impact and guiding them in building psychologically healthy workplaces. Named to the Thinkers50 Global Top 50 Coaches list, Gena brings a rare blend of psychological expertise, corporate leadership experience, and multicultural insight to every coaching engagement.

She is the author of the multiple award-winning book Leading Inclusion: Drive Change Your Employees Can See and Feel, a widely praised guide for leaders who want to build truly inclusive organizations from the top down. Her voice is a trusted one in the leadership space. She is a contributor to Forbes.com, and her ideas have been featured in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Fortune, Bloomberg, The New York Times, and many other prominent outlets. She is frequently invited to keynote conferences and advise executive teams worldwide.

Coaching Philosophy and Perspective

At the heart of Gena’s work is the belief that respect is the foundation of leadership effectiveness. Her proprietary R-E-S-P-E-C-T Ethos™ framework provides leaders with a practical roadmap for ensuring that every employee feels seen, heard, and valued. She helps executives understand that respect is not just a “nice to have”—it is a performance driver that strengthens collaboration, fuels innovation, and enhances organizational resilience. Gena also shares her “Yes …And” career model, documented in the book Own Your Story, to help clients build portfolio careers that can help them thrive in highly dynamic and competitive work environments.

Gena’s coaching is grounded in psychological science but tailored to the real-world challenges her clients face. She draws on her deep expertise in communication, group dynamics, power and influence, and organizational culture to help leaders build the skills and awareness they need to thrive. Her approach combines data-driven insights with humanity and candor, enabling leaders to achieve not only their business goals but also grow in ways that are personally meaningful.

Coaching Practice and Methods

Gena coaches leaders who are developing to take eventually take on C-suite roles across various industries, including financial services, technology, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, and manufacturing. Her clients span North America, Latin America, Europe, and the Caribbean, and she brings strong cross-cultural competence, shaped by her life and work experiences in the United States, England, and the Caribbean.

Her coaching engagements are highly customized. She frequently integrates 360-degree interviews, validated assessments, role-playing, and live observations into her work, providing clients with feedback they might not otherwise receive. This approach ensures that leaders gain a clear, evidence-based understanding of their impact—and actionable pathways to growth.

In addition to one-on-one coaching, Gena serves as a strategic advisor to executive teams and boards, helping them develop practical leadership strategies, enhance organizational culture, and drive inclusive initiatives. She helps large enterprises strengthen employee engagement, mitigate costly turnover, and build leadership pipelines that align with future business needs.

Many of her clients are talented executives whose leadership potential is clear, but whose approach—whether overly assertive, intensely fast-paced, overly operational, or something else — limits their effectiveness. Through coaching, Gena helps them gain self-awareness, refine their communication and presence, and shift from driving results unilaterally to leading through collaboration and influence.

Her coaching often results in leaders strengthening peer trust, enhancing executive presence, or learning to delegate and empower their teams. In some cases, leaders have transformed their intensity into calm confidence that resonates in board-level conversations. Other clients have shifted from an overemphasis on operational execution to strategic leadership, making them more impactful for the entire enterprise. Clients also report reduced stress, increased resilience, and a greater ability to navigate organizational complexity with clarity and composure.

For the organizations that invest in coaching, the benefits are tangible: greater executive alignment, reduced leadership friction, healthier cultures, and measurable improvements in business performance. Gena’s work consistently demonstrates the strategic ROI of executive coaching—developing leaders who not only succeed individually but also strengthen the organizations they serve.

Leadership Experience

Before founding Feels Human LLC, her boutique advisory and coaching firm, Gena held senior roles in major corporations. She served as Executive Consulting Leader at IBM, where she advised Fortune 500 leaders on employee experience, culture transformation, and leadership effectiveness. In her role as Vice President of Assessment & Selection at Raymond James Financial, she developed the company’s first in-house talent assessment program and led talent acquisition efforts. While serving as Director of Talent Development at HSNi, she developed leadership and organizational development strategies in a fast-paced, multi-channel media environment.

These experiences gave Gena an insider’s understanding of the pressures executives face—and the practical realities of leading in high-stakes environments. She combines this corporate background with her coaching practice to help leaders navigate complexity with both confidence and humanity.

Writing and Thought Leadership

Gena is a prolific writer and speaker on the intersection of leadership, psychology, and inclusion. She is a regular contributor to Forbes.com, where she explores topics such as coaching ROI, respect as a competitive advantage, gender parity, inclusion as a strategic imperative, and the impact of AI on the workplace.

Her book, Leading Inclusion, has been described as a blueprint for leaders seeking to drive meaningful culture change. In addition to her book, she has contributed chapters to volumes published by Oxford University Press, Wiley, and Cambridge Scholars Publishing, reflecting her status as a respected scholar-practitioner whose work bridges the gap between research and practice.

Her insights are widely quoted in the business and popular press, including Bloomberg, Inc., Essence, HR Brew, The Telegraph, SHRM, Newsweek, The Fintech Times, and BBC Worklife.

Recognition and Service

Gena’s influence extends well beyond her client engagements. She was honored as an inaugural inductee to the Thinkers50 Coaches50 list (2024), which recognizes the world’s most impactful executive coaches. She serves on the Professional Practice Editorial Board of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), and she is Chair-Elect of the American Psychological Association’s Committee for the Advancement of General and Applied Psychology (CAGAP).

She has long contributed to her community as a Guardian ad Litem in Florida, advocating for vulnerable children, and has served on multiple boards and committees focused on education, business mentorship, and diversity advancement.

She earned her PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the University of South Florida and completed her coach training at the University of Texas.