Bio
Melodie Hicks is a leading expert in global leadership, executive education, influence, and top managing teams – with 25 years experience working with Fortune 500 businesses. She helps leaders translate business goals and vision into creative leadership strategies. She is an expert at helping leaders transform their communication styles to inspire people both within and outside their organizations.
She has coached at all levels of organizations, from CEO to star individual contributors. Over the last fifteen years, Melodie has coached and provided executive education to over a thousand leaders including CEOs and VPs in a variety of Fortune 500 companies. She has designed and delivered programs in communication and leadership skills for companies such as Cargill, Heidrick & Struggles, Cisco Systems, Disney, Merrill Lynch, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and Societe General.
For fifteen years she has served as a primary external faculty member for McKinsey and Company, where she has in depth experience with partners and directors as well as associates and engagement managers. For McKinsey, Melodie designed and facilitates programs in Stress Management, How to Design and Facilitate Effective Meetings, How to Coach Others, Presence, Gravitas and Confidence. Other examples of her recent work include:
• Coaching a CEO whose leadership style was considered too directive and was leading to attrition among his top team. Melodie helped him transform his leadership communication to better inspire the organization from the top down.
• Helped dozens of leaders from the managing director level on down successfully acculturate into new cultures when they were placed from the outside and needed to demonstrate clear wins in the first six months of their roles.
• In Melodie’s previous work at Harvard University where she produced award winning science education videos and interactive television programs in partnership with National Science Foundation, she interviewed and coached international celebrities in Science Education for their television appearances.
• She received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship for her work in integrating the arts and technology in Science Education. Melodie’s extensive experience in theater as an actress and director allows her to apply storytelling, improvisation and other theatre-based techniques to leadership development.
Melodie holds a Master’s Degree from Harvard University in educational psychology and learning theory. She is in the process of completing her PhD. In her learning programs and coaching that she conducts worldwide, her focus is the application of experiential exercises to improve leadership and problem solving skills. By addressing multiple learning modalities she designs and delivers programs that cultivate personal insight, are intellectually rigorous, and have demonstrated practical results. Melodie has offices in Los Angeles and Normandy, France. She has also worked as a senior leader in Mexico City. She is fluent in English, Spanish, and French.