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.

“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!

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 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.

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.

“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.”