Summit Post
The Women Leaders Association, the largest publisher and events organization for women professionals with 43,000 members and more than 130 regional chapters, today announced Leora Kirby as the first official Coaching Partner of its Oklahoma City chapter, OKCWomenLeaders.org. The appointment launches the association's Coaching Partners program in the metro, giving members direct access to coaches who have been carefully screened for credentials, track record, and client results.
The Coaching Partners program was created to solve a problem members raise constantly. Coaching is one of the highest-impact investments a professional woman can make in her career, and one of the hardest to shop for. Coaching titles are unregulated and quality varies enormously. Under the program, the Women Leaders Association does the screening on the member's behalf, vetting every Coaching Partner for recognized certifications, verifiable experience, and excellent client reviews, so members can book a consultation with confidence.
If you have reached a pivotal moment, a crossroads where the path you are on does not quite fit anymore, that is the moment Kirby built her practice for.
Before she became a certified coach, Kirby led a thriving corporate life steering companies through groundbreaking change. Twenty-five years as a human resources executive took her through mergers and acquisitions, startups and turnarounds, reorganizations, IPO preparation, union negotiations, and plant closures, across manufacturing, logistics, government, and service organizations. She served as Vice President of Human Resources at Climate Control Group and at APMEX, led HR for Pon North America's five operating companies with 1,800 employees across 43 locations in twelve states, and directed human resources at Cintas, then North America's largest uniform supplier. She has sat at the executive table, handled crucial negotiations, and been the person leaders turned to when the stakes were highest.
That experience is the foundation of Inner Odyssey Coaching and Consulting, which Kirby owns and leads from Edmond, Oklahoma. An Associate Certified Coach through the International Coaching Federation, a Certified Professional Coach, EQ-i 2.0 certified, and Dare to Lead™ trained, she is also a SHRM Senior Certified Professional who teaches the SHRM certification course for Northwestern University and Auburn University. As a coach she describes herself as a passenger on her client's journey, uncovering barriers to success and building confidence in the ability to make change. Her goal is not to provide ready-made answers but to guide reflection and help clients discover where they feel blocked, so they navigate toward solutions that resonate with their own values and goals.
Members can view Leora's profile, book a free discovery call, or book a free 30-minute discovery call at
https://OKCWomenLeaders.org/coaching.html?coach=LeoraKirby
"Being a valued leader and having an aspiring career are more than just words. You can make it a reality," said Kirby. "It means being truthful about what you want rather than accepting what seems realistic, recognizing your talents and linking them to the right opportunities, and speaking with confidence about your worth. My job is not to hand you answers. It is to help you find where you feel blocked and walk beside you while you decide what to do about it. The moment you realize you can create the career and life you want, rather than feeling lost at sea, is when the real journey begins. I am honored to bring that to the Women Leaders Association's Oklahoma City members."
"Leora spent twenty-five years in the chair our members are working toward, and she has run into the hardest situations a leader can face: the merger, the turnaround, the closure, the negotiation nobody wants," said Lydia Price, 2026 Volunteer Chair of the Women Leaders Association. "A coach who has lived that, and who pairs it with ICF certification and senior HR credentials, is exactly the partner our Oklahoma City members deserve as their first."
The Oklahoma City launch is part of a national rollout extending Coaching Partners across the association's network of more than 130 chapters, pairing each city's members with coaches selected for that market.
Coaching Partners extends the association's mission of giving professional women both structural transparency and individual support. Research from Pew and others estimates that women still earn roughly 15 percent less than men on average, and most have little visibility into which employers advance women fairly. The association's Glass Ceiling Score project scores most major U.S. employers on how fairly they promote women into management and executive roles, and its chapters publish Best Women Employers rankings, compensation studies, and annual Top 50 Women Leaders awards. Coaching Partners adds the personal dimension: once a member sees the landscape clearly, a proven coach helps her move through it.
About Leora Kirby
Leora Kirby, ACC, SHRM-SCP, is the owner of Inner Odyssey Coaching and Consulting (inner-odyssey.com) in Edmond, Oklahoma, providing executive and leadership coaching, career coaching, life coaching, and human resources consulting. An Associate Certified Coach through the International Coaching Federation and a Certified Professional Coach, she is EQ-i 2.0 certified and Dare to Lead™ trained. Her 25-year human resources career spans Cintas, APMEX, Climate Control Group, Specialty Foods Group, The Wornick Company, and Pon North America, where she served as U.S. Deployment Champion of Six Sigma for parent company Pon Holdings. She teaches the SHRM certification course for Northwestern University and Auburn University, previously co-founded Jumpstart HR Partners, and taught accounting, business law, human resources, and management as an associate professor at Southern State Community College. She holds an MBA in finance from Wright State University and a B.S. from The Ohio State University. Oklahoma City members can connect with her through her profile link above.
About the Women Leaders Association
The Women Leaders Association is a non-profit committed to the development and advancement of women in the corporate arena. With 43,000 members and more than 130 chapters in major cities, it is the largest publisher and events organization serving women professionals, producing conferences, leadership programs, original research, and daily publications for its members. We also celebrate the top 50 business women in each city, publish a Glass Ceiling Score ranking how well most employers advance women, and then recognize the best women's employers in each city from these rankings.
Events Near You: https://WomanLeaders.org/r/
Best Employers Near You: https://WomanLeaders.org/r/GlassCeiling
Visit the Oklahoma City chapter: https://OKCWomenLeaders.org
Media Contact: Women Leaders Association, Service@WomanLeaders.org
Media Contact:
Lydia Price
Women Leaders Association
Service@WomanLeaders.org
