Coaching Bios

Melissa Fish

Program Director

Melissa Fish is the Program Director and offers 25 years’ experience in performance consulting and business education working for Franklin Templeton Investments, American River College, and small businesses. Melissa has partnered with organizational leaders from both the private and public sectors to develop strategic goals, outline succession plans, and align human talent to surpass expectations. She has a proven record of completing projects on time and on budget while producing measurable returns on investment. In addition to her training and organizational development experience, Melissa earned her MBA with a concentration in Human Resources Management.

Helping your organization develop competencies, improve performance indicators, promote equity and inclusion, and build trust are some of our key goals. Melissa is committed to supporting clients by providing a full spectrum of services including assessment, performance management, instructional delivery, coaching, or other consulting solutions. Her specialties include leadership development, talent coaching, organizational alignment, program design and facilitation, change consulting, project management, and team effectiveness. She also offers experience in diversity, equity, and inclusion work to improve cultural competence, build opportunities, and drive progress.

Melissa is excited to collaborate on your talent development blueprint and translate your strategic vision into practical action plans for positive impact.

Kimberly Geil

Coach

Dr. Geil is the founder of Coaching Heights, a coaching business that specializes in helping people make their jobs better using the science of job crafting. As both an ICF-certified coach and a certified Optimize coach, she is committed to continually improving her own protocols and empowering others to do the same. She helps people integrate ancient wisdom, modern science, practical tools and the Fundamentals of Optimal living — eating, moving, sleeping, breathing, focusing, celebrating and prospering — into their work and relationships. She is passionate about building community and helping people optimize all facets of their work, relationships and day-to-day lives.

Dr. Geil is based in Sacramento, California, where she does executive coaching, training, facilitation, curriculum development, editing and more for various state agencies. She spends her summers in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, where she facilitates soft skills and leadership training for the 70+ guides at Exum Mountain Guides.

She has a BA in sociology from Stanford University and received her doctorate in educational psychology and research on teaching from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2011. Her research focused on burnout and engagement among teachers and transformative professional development opportunities.

Antoinette Joy

Coach

Antoinette is a leadership coach with over 20 years’ experience creating and maintaining healthy work environments. Antoinette’s accomplishments include influencing and supporting employees and organizations to achieve their unforeseen highest potential through coaching, enhancing organizational culture, designing training and recognition programs, and partnering with executives on strategic initiatives. She has coached all levels of staff within organizations and state agencies, including new supervisors, department leaders and executives.

As an independent training consultant, she designs and delivers impactful, applicable on-site and virtual courses. Working extensively with Los Rios Community College District’s Government Training Academy, UC Davis’ Continuing and Professional Education HR Program, CPS HR Consulting, and more, she continues to receive accolades for educating while keeping attendees engaged and empowered to apply course content. Her curriculum is vast and includes coaching, leadership development, communication skills and talent management.

She holds a Professional Human Resources (PHR) certification and Society for Human Resource Management Certified Professional (SHRM-CP) certification. She has a bachelor’s degree in business administration and human resources from California State University, Sacramento.

Nick LeForce

Coach

Nick is president of Inner Works, established in 1992, a coaching and training company located in Northern California that provides training and executive coaching services to businesses as well as personal coaching services to individuals. He holds undergraduate degrees in psychology and social welfare and a master’s degree in rehabilitation administration. Nick is certified as a trainer of neuro-linguistic programming and is an active member of the International Association for Generative Change (IAGC).

Nick has designed and delivered coaching certification programs internationally, and he has been a key member of the core staff of trainers for the ICF Certified Coach Training programs offered through the NLP Institute of California and the Academy of Leadership Coaching and NLP from 2002 through 2016. In 2010, Nick designed and delivered the coach training program for the core trainers in the Government Training Academy of the Los Rios Community College District. He has authored 12 books, including co-authoring Powerful Questions and Techniques for Coaches and Therapists with Tim and Kris Hallbom.

Jannene Litchfield

Coach

Jannene is the president of Best Coach for You, providing leadership and career coaching for professionals. As a certified coach, she uses reflection, exploration and accountable goal setting to help clients embrace their potential. She helps professionals identify their strengths and opportunities for development, and create better integration with career and personal life, resulting in greater personal and professional happiness.

Jannene is an International Coaching Federation–certified coach and utilizes a variety of assessments, such as Leadership Practices Inventory, Elevations, StrengthsFinder, DiSC, Myers-Briggs and Thomas-Kilmann instruments. These assessments help leaders and professionals receive feedback to gain clarity in their professional development plan.

In her roles as the vice president of human resources for Schools Federal Credit Union and director of human resources for Verizon Wireless, Jannene led the talent management and human performance side of the businesses. She continues to coach and teach leadership classes for Los Rios Community College District and California State University, Sacramento, and is also a fellow coach at Better Up.

She earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Texas Tech University and an MBA from National University. Additionally, she has earned her Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) and Associate Certificated Coach (ACC) certifications.

Michelle Schmitt

Coach

As a leadership consultant and coach, Michelle has spent her nearly 30-year career dedicated to public service with the state of California. She is passionate about bringing the best practices of servant leadership, healthy workplace cultures and personal development to state service. Her ultimate goal has always been to improve the lives of the neediest citizens in the community as well as the lives of those serving them. As the chief of organizational capacity and workforce management, she was pivotal in getting state government to recognize the imperative to create healthy, sustainable organizations: places people come, stay, serve with excellence and thrive both personally and professionally.

Michelle is certified as both an integral and somatic coach working with individuals to unleash their gifts and potential: serving her clients in seeing and growing themselves as well as their organizations, thereby creating wholeness and sustainable leadership excellence. She is a collaborator, facilitator of dynamic dialogues and trainer. She co-creates communities of excellence by partnering with leadership and all members of the organization to innovate workplaces that invite people to bring their gifts to serve a greater purpose as well as the bottom line.

Dennis Wade

Coach

Dennis has provided employee coaching services to a variety of large and small organizations in both the private and public sectors, including Intel, DuPont, Art Institute, Caltrans, CalHR, Trinity Technology Group, DBI Beverage, California Department of Insurance and California Department of Water Resources. Coaching topics include employee and executive performance, management skills, leadership development, presentation skills, interpersonal communication and anger management, among others. A graduate of UC Davis, he also holds a master’s degree in organization development from the University of San Francisco and a coaching certification from Government Training Academy.

Dennis is co-author of The New Supervisor’s Coach: A Guide to the Top Three Priorities in Your New Position, which has been well-received in public and private sectors and has been used as a textbook at three colleges. He also co-authored the companion book, The New Supervisor’s Coach Personal Workbook.

Bruce Winner

Coach

Bruce is the founder and past director of the Los Rios Community College District Government Training Academy and the GTA’s Coaching Group. Bruce has led many large-scale organizational coaching programs for California state agencies. For 22 years he led the GTA’s results-oriented group of trainers, coaches and consultants. He believes that managerial-level coaching is one of the most powerful tools available for empowering individuals and driving organizational performance.

In 2010, Bruce completed the 108-hour Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Coaching Course, sponsored by Los Rios’ Government Training Academy, and he is currently pursuing an additional coaching certification from the International Coaching Federation (ICF). He holds an MBA from the University of California, Davis.

Bruce began his training career in West Africa and spent six years there as an agricultural extension agent and project manager for the Peace Corps and USAID. While there, he promoted oxen as an intermediate technology development solution. Bruce was the founder and president of the American Brewers Guild, the nation’s first brewing school for the brewpub and microbrewing industry, and worked for several years for University Extension, UC Davis, managing training initiatives in business, food science and agriculture.