CLIENTS & TESTIMONIALS
AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP GROWTH & IMPACT
Hear from leaders and organizations who have experienced the impact of the IEP Method®, a proven methodology developed and tested by Active Choices, Inc.
Mick Lee, Chief Administrative Officer
MBO Partners
Kim Ahearn, Director/Global Accounts
United Airlines
Woodson Witt, Vice President, Safety & Human Resources — Modern Transportation
The Positive Energy Workplace Initiative® has been a fantastic catalyst for growth across much of our leadership team.
Active Choices does a wonderful job of curating meaningful content and infuse plenty of opportunity in their programs for on-the-job practice of these principles.
I highly recommend ACI and the IEP work for organizations that are serious about culture change, innovation, and growing their people — the work is unique, caring, effective, and eye-opening for the kind of leadership we need to have now in order to innovate and grow our future leaders.
Anese is an incredible side-by-side collaborator. She helps us focus on what’s most important to us—our people.
We consider her a core part of our talent strategy, looking forward to each next step together.
CREATING ORGANIZATIONAL IMPACT SINCE 2002
Below are some of the organizations we’ve had the honor to partner alongside their leadership and culture-optimization journey.
Ford Motor Company
IDEO
Cooper
Doorsteps
Fitbit
Nike
Vivayic
15Five
Doorsteps
Taulia
Promise Wine
Anthony Wilder Design/Build
Sackett & Associates
Sam Bernstein Law Firm
Perlis Wellness Center
Probility (Physical Therapy)
Ensign Services
BlueConic
Human-Centered Design Team at Ford
Sound Community Services
Henry Ford Health System
Swedish American Health System
John Hopkins University
Government Sector: US Navy, CDC
Law Enforcement
Placer County Association of Realtors
SAC Women’s Council of Realtors
Illinois Society for Association Executives
Wonderland Center
Youth Guidance Organization
YGO’s Parent Leadership Conference
State of Wisconsin
Tustin Unified School District
SAI Iowa
University of Phoenix
Destination Aesthetics
Rincon Consultants, Inc.
University of Michigan
USC Marshall
Zingerman’s Community of Businesses
Joie De Vivre Hospitality
Domaine Carneros
BiRite Market/COB
IBM
CitiCorp
McDonald’s Corporation
Chevron
BP Amoco
Vistaprint
Freeman
GM Financial
BNY Mellon
Kaiser Permanente
Yetter Tax
Many of our clients include Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 companies, and must remain confidential.
However, we are confident with what IS shared publicly, and that it will give you a sense of our work and the results from it.
Anese Cavanaugh has identified the elusive secret ingredient of great leadership that hundreds, if not thousands, of other[s]… have missed. She calls it Intentional Energetic Presence (IEP), and it will change the way you run your business.
Anese is an utter delight. Amazing storyteller. Impactful philosophy. Charismatic and engaging. Absolutely incredible. Walked away feeling inspired and empowered. The way she explained her information was in such an engaging, easy-to-understand way. Loved this session. The energy and mindset were incredible. The room burst out into the loudest applause I’ve heard so far. The poem was fantastic. I can’t wait to read her books.
Before working with Active Choices, Inc. and learning the IEP Methodology, our global leadership team was experiencing dysfunction, including a lack of trust and poor communications. We really needed to be nimble, creative, and collaborative to innovate for the company — but this seemed impossible with the constant workforce turnover, exhaustion, and defensiveness that people were often feeling. And especially difficult in an industry that has its own existing culture that is rooted, resistant, and slow to change.
After our work with Anese and her team, one of the biggest impacts we’ve noticed is that we better understand each other’s intentions, have developed our ability to be empathetic and support each other, and are better able to manage our own energy and presence. The work is so important for our core leadership team that we chose to extend it further into our workforce to amplify access and impact. This proved to be essential to developing our leaders, strengthening retention, and making us a better organization to work within. As we continue to navigate transitions in the company overall, this work has helped us to build trust and accountability, lower our attrition rate, keep our organization going, and our people connected.
I highly recommend ACI and the IEP work for organizations that are serious about culture change, innovation, and growing their people — the work is unique, caring, effective, and eye-opening for the kind of leadership we need to have now in order to innovate and grow our future leaders.
After reading Contagious You and Contagious Culture, I knew Anese’s thought leadership and approach would be the right fit for our company! We co-created an internal training series with Anese, distributed her books, and engaged with more than 2500 employees in more than a dozen countries. Anese helped bring awareness to how we show up and the energy we bring to the workplace transcends technology, location, and world events. Her engaging approach as a speaker and moderator resonated with all levels of employees, and even the most senior and accomplished executives reported the lessons they learned from an hour with Anese. If you haven’t yet experienced “The Anese Effect” I encourage you to not wait another moment!
Anese is a remarkable “force multiplier” for business, and made a profound impact with our team using the IEP Method. She has deep insight into herself and others, and brings that unique skill to bear in helping people unlock parts of themselves which may be holding themselves or the business back. I can say without a doubt that Anese was, and continues to be a game changer for our business. She is one of the most credible, insightful and transparent people I know, and her professional presence has truly elevated the art of the possible, enabling us to move into previously unimagined levels of high performance.
As a frequent business traveler, the PEW-i Platform has allowed me to learn, practice and stay present with the IEP Method while on the go! After a live training experience, I feel empowered and enabled to practice my Intentional Energetic Presence in real-time — even with a richly-scheduled life. The platform gives me access to the ACI Team, community, and IEP Method reminders, and the encouragement and ability to learn and re-learn on my own time is incredibly impactful. I also appreciate how the app integrates into my weekly work rituals, and use my IEP awareness to balance my tech-rich duties alongside my pencil-and-paper preferences. It is like having a “business BFF” in my pocket!
We implemented the IEP Methodology in our company by launching the self-study course throughout the entire organization, reaching more than 100 employees across all departments and regions. The self-paced course was the perfect solution for us, and we created internal gamification and incentives (The IEP Olympics!) to encourage cross-functional teaming and completing the course by certain dates. The level of enthusiasm and adoption of the methodology has been profound, and each individual has taken something a little different from the framework or the way they apply it in their life. One of the biggest benefits we’ve experienced is having a common language that is accessible, unifying, and transformative. It’s something Americans and Dutch can connect on, engineers and marketers are aligned, and even tenured executives and early-career contributors can find common ground.
We can’t change the world unless we change ourselves, but that’s much easier said than done. Anese’s workshop helped us accomplish more self-change in four hours than most of us are able to do in four years! We host a lot of workshops for our students here at University of Michigan, but this one might be the best yet.
“These sessions are incredibly powerful to women in leadership today – I’m grateful ACI takes the time to provide a safe space for leaders to have real-talk and to dig into how to address current issues in a realistic way. “
Anese Cavanaugh’s presentation to Henry Ford Health System not only resonated, inspired, and energized our people, the application of what we experienced made an immediate impact (and is still continuing to ripple a month after). For me, I used it by 10a the next day, TWICE! I took it home with me. I saw an immediate effect on how I showed up with people, and how that influenced how they showed up with me. I am not the only one; I now attend meetings where other attendees are bringing what they learned. The application of Anese’s work and the impact of her presence continues to grow and is absolutely contagious. Anese is contagious. She is funny, clever, present, and brings a level of care and authenticity to the stage that invites people to embrace this work in ways that are real for them, creating immediate impact and their own kind of contagiousness. We’re still buzzing. Thank you Anese for sharing your brilliance with Henry Ford Health System!
Anese teaches us how absolutely critical it is to align one’s physical and emotional health with the way we live our daily lives at work; encouraging each of us to get at our true passions and to pursue a single, coherent life that’s true to who we are; making clear that the more effectively we’re able to do that every day the more effective our leadership is going to be; and that the more effectively we’re able to do all of that the more effectively our organizations are going to run… From what I know and have heard, I can pretty much guarantee that anyone who’s equally open to it will benefit from what Anese is offering, many times over. Her work is an investment in ourselves and our organizations that—given the challenges of the times—is more meaningful than ever.
My experience with Anese and IEP has been outstanding. I’ve attended her IEP Live! workshops with my team and every time we come back with renewed awareness of our relationships with ourselves and each other. It’s been the reason the cohesiveness of our team has been so strong — resulting in no turnover for four years and a designation on the 2017 Forbes 25 Small Giants Best Small Businesses in America. Humbling!
At imageOne, half of our Team Members are located throughout the United States. When the opportunity arises to send an individual to one of her workshops near to their location, it’s a no brainer. And, the feedback from the team is always positive x10. We utilize Yammer as our internal communication and the posts are always thoughtful, inspiring, and heartfelt following a Team Member’s attendance at one of Anese’s workshops.
The IEP work has helped us maximize our investments in other training we’ve done in the organization. It’s proven to be the missing ingredient to the other training initiatives we’ve rolled out. Before IEP we had people doing the training they received; they’d learn it, go back to work, “do it,” but not fully embody or own it. After IEP we had people being the work, showing up better, and being more intentional about their impact and the way they practiced new leadership behaviors and skills. There has been a new level of accountability for people owning their part in the environment we’re creating together. I was not sure how well ideas like intentions, energy, and presence would do in our organization, however, this work has been the “intangible thing” that’s making our people and our culture better. You can feel the difference.
We were fortunate to have Anese as our keynote speaker for our annual WIRexec conference in SF. The content was essential for leadership today, especially as women in leadership out to create a great impact in their lives and organizations. Her talk brought us back to ourselves in recognizing our presence as impact in today’s world, the necessity of self-care in showing up, and the gift of refocusing ourselves on ourselves in order to create that impact. I’d highly recommend Anese for any keynote where you want inspiration and application in the moment that follows people home and sticks. Months after our conference, people are still talking about her message. She brings a level of authenticity and inspiration to this conversation that is a gift in today’s “richly scheduled” world.
Anese took the stage at the Small Giants Summit in 2018 and delivered a powerful & impactful presentation on IEP and intentional leadership. Her style, way of connecting with the audience and content is exceptional. It was one of the highest rated sessions of the summit!
The Contagious Culture book and the IEP Live training are making a significant impact on the Tustin Unified School District. Our greatest asset is our people, and the degree to which we can help them share their best-selves will determine the service that we provide. Folks are taking care of themselves, so they can be in service to our students.
You can’t deny the unparalleled level of energy that Anese brings into (and out of) the organizations she works with. The energy of leadership dramatically affects a company top to bottom and she’s figured out how to set up an entire staff to be completely present, engaged and contributing at the highest levels.
Anese Cavanaugh is a trailblazer in creating new strategies about what it means to be a courageous leader in today’s market. Her fresh ideas are powerful, energizing and address what companies need to do to create healthy and engaged workforces where people thrive.
There was not just “one” moment. In addition to experiencing my own personal awakening and growth, I was also able to share in the experiences of the others’ (attendees) awakening as well.
…to say she has been catalytic in helping unlock new layers of self-awareness and personal insight would be an understatement… Fantastic.
Anese is a game changer. Period. She’s one of those special coaches who truly evolves the games of the people and organizations she works with. Her ability to connect with myself and my team was engaging, effective and enlightening. Her style is challenging and motivating . She’s a great listener and possesses the unique ability to identify areas of opportunity quickly and then draw on her vast resources and knowledge for potential recommendations and solutions.
Bottom line: she gets results. She helped everyone in our organization to become more effective on both a professional and personal level. Years later the work has sustained itself and continues to be talked about as a highlight of peoples’ professional—and personal—paths. Remarkable.
After more than a year working with Anese, I can say without reservation that she can bring out the best leadership skills in every member of your team. She makes people mesh. She super powers your teamwork. And she makes cultural change look easy. Stop arguing, call her.
Anese is an embodiment of her own principles, showing up with grace, presence and an intention to contribute to those around her that is felt by participants in her workshops and by the clients she serves. Her approach helps leaders and their teams tap into their full energetic and creative capacity so they can create the conditions for thriving teams, innovating and performing to their full potential.
Your ability to connect with the crowd and relate the topic at hand to our real lives put you at the top of the list for favorite session in participant feedback. People were literally going into sessions afterwards using your acronyms. Thank you for your time, energy, and commitment to this work.
I’ve come away with just a whole tool belt full of tools, depending on the situation, that I can do either by myself or before a meeting to actually intend what I want my presence to be. And that, also, I’m responsible for my impact. What also really surprised me was how incredibly intuitive we all are. I don’t think any of her exercises were more than a minute. And some people I didn’t know at all. And she just threw us in. And I really saw that within 30 seconds somebody could intuit things about me, what I needed to do for my leadership or things that I could do to have greater presence, that were right on. I really feel like IEP is completely native to how we’re wired as human beings. It’s a power that when we’re not intending, has complete impact on the room, and when we do intend with positive intent, the power is actually limitless. Anese has developed this subtle, powerful, “ninja” way of helping us understand IEP with specific, simple, easy tools to do it with that when put all together, can really change cultures and I actually think can change the planet.
…We’ve woven Anese’s approach to energy management into almost every element of our work and culture. Without question it has helped to improve our service, the quality of our workplace, the quality of the daily experience … We’ve adapted it in the same way that we’ve adapted Robert Greenleaf’s Servant Leadership, Peter Block’s Stewardship, Jack Stack’s Open Book Finance, and Fred Reichheld’s work on Net Promoter Scores …We like working with Anese … it is definitely making a positive difference in our organization.
Anese worked with our team in many capacities to help us work better and more effectively as a team. She’s been instrumental in providing us with tools and methods to help along the way. Her workshops are fabulous, engaging and inspiring and bring teams together in a very positive atmosphere. Not only that, Anese has great abilities to respond and react to the team she’s working with to get the maximum output each time.
Whenever a company is in need of better leadership and cohesive vision I always recommend Anese. She’s also a great career coach and advisor and has helped our team individually in very positive ways. Anese has had a huge impact on my career personally and I feel that impact every day.
“This book club just gave and gave! The biggest benefit for me was realizing that it is possible for me to “show up” for the hard stuff with the same contagious positive energy that I bring to the stuff I love doing. That was an actual life changing moment. My mantra for many years has been to Live Life On Purpose but your work has taken purposefulness to another level altogether. I start a task now with the CFF and the 5 Steps to Intentional Impact. It is magical. I hope to have many successes to share in the future.”