Amy Soto

Senior Consultant

Amy Soto, Senior Consultant

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Amy Soto is a strategic leadership development partner with over 25 years of experience helping organizations strengthen their talent, elevate organizational effectiveness, and embed leadership excellence into business strategy. She brings a systems-oriented approach to leadership development—aligning program design, executive coaching, and talent solutions with broader organizational goals. 

Background & Industry Experience

Amy brings deep experience in leadership development, executive coaching, organizational development (OD) and organizational effectiveness (OE) across diverse industries in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. She most recently served as the Global Portfolio Product Manager for Open Enrollment (OE) programs at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), where she led the lifecycle management of CCL’s core global offerings—including Leadership at the Peak, the organization’s flagship C-suite program, which consistently maintained a 98 NPS rating. In this role, she was responsible for OE programs’ strategic design, improvements & revisions, quality assurance, faculty & coach capability development, and operational integration across delivery teams and regions. Amy ensured each learning journey leveraged the latest and most relevant CCL leadership research and signature methodologies. Her work in the leadership “open enrollment” space also included digital learning integration, knowledge management asset management, and vendor oversight—creating scalable, high-impact programs for a global participant base from organizations that included Fortune 100 companies and regional institutions alike.  

 At Cone Health, a regional healthcare system in North Carolina, she served as Executive Director of Organizational Effectiveness, leading a team of ten to deliver systemwide leadership development for physicians, nurses, clinical leaders, and senior administrators. She directed and delivered the Physician Leadership Academy, which drove a 22-point increase in physician engagement (Press Ganey) in just one year. Her accomplishments with physician leadership earned her an invitation to serve on the National Center for Healthcare Leadership’s Physician Leadership Development Council (NCHL-PLD) for three years. She also launched the Physician Leadership Learning Exchange, an innovative alumni platform to foster sustained leadership learning and cross-functional collaboration. 

 Earlier, at Cone Health Medical Group (CHMG), Amy built the Organizational Development function from the ground up. She created the CHMG Orientation program, designed the Dyad Academy for physician-administrator pairs, created a systematized talent review process, and delivered targeted learning experiences such as a Cardiologist Team Development Program and a “Boot Camp” for clinic administrators through a vendor partnership with Medical Group Management Association (MGMA). Her additional healthcare experience includes providing organizational development consulting and designing a bespoke administrative leadership program for the academic medical center, Atrium Wake Forest Health. 

 In addition to her healthcare impact, Amy held a senior faculty role at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), as well as various roles in Learning & Development at Starbucks Coffee Company and Corbis, bringing OD and learning expertise to global environments. Her ability to create developmental experiences that build leadership capability to achieve business strategy makes her a valued advisor across sectors. 

Coaching Approach

Amy’s coaching approach blends empathy, strategic insight, and systems thinking. She creates psychologically safe environments that help leaders clarify goals, identify barriers, and make intentional progress. Her clients have included C-suite executives, physician executives, academic deans, clinical department heads, and high-potential professionals navigating complex change. She draws from positive psychology, organizational behavior, and resilience to foster awareness and action. 

Facilitation & Teambuilding Approach

From executive retreats to enterprise transformation initiatives, Amy’s facilitation style is collaborative, purposeful, and grounded in real-world dynamics. At Cone Health, Atrium Wake Forest Baptist, Corbis, and Columbia Hospitality, she led cross-system leadership retreats and interventions to drive clarity, alignment, and momentum. She designs custom learning experiences based on client needs and places a premium on creating a blend of trust and challenge to evoke a sense of vulnerability and potential that drives transformation in participant mindsets, behavior, and relationships. She is well-versed in using 4MAT and ADDIE instructional design methodologies and leverages adult learning theory, cohort connection, experientials, assessment, and business strategy to ensure practical application and measurable impact.  

 

Relevant Assignments

Assessment 

  • 360 Feedback and multi-assessment feedback: Facilitates 360 and multi-assessment feedback sessions with leaders and has done this work with early career managers to senior executives.  
  • Revision of a team health assessment: Led a team of cross-functional contributors in upgrading a team health assessment to ready it for commercialized use at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL). 

Coaching 

  • Clinical Director, Surgical Services, academic medical center. Focus areas: system perspective, team culture, career pathing, and bringing operational standardization to complex processes. 
  • M.D., Chief of Oncology, regional healthcare system. Focus areas: creating a patient-centric culture, establishing a new, metric-driven compensation structure, developing a strategic roadmap for the future, and building positive relationships in a complex, matrixed environment. 
  • M.D., Medical Director of Pediatrics, regional healthcare system. Focus areas: quality of care, change in organizational structure design & implementation, dealing with organizational politics, career pathing.  

Facilitation & Teambuilding 

  • Leadership Development Programs: Has worked with countless organizations to design and deliver leadership development workshops and complex multi-phase, multi-leader level programs. Programmatic content examples include sessions focused on: self-awareness; vision and values; building relationships; change leadership; conflict competence; influence; polarity thinking; strategic planning; executive presence, and more. 
  • Executive Education Design: As a former senior faculty and portfolio product manager at CCL, routinely collaborated with senior leaders and executives and led the revision of CCL’s flagship C-suite program, Leadership at the Peak.  
  • Executive Retreat Design & Facilitation: Has designed countless retreats in collaboration with C-suite team members spanning one day to multiple days intended to clarify direction, determine decision rights, identify tactics to execute strategy, create re-designed structures, design change leadership approaches, build relationships, achieve operational alignment, address trust and psychological safety issues, and more. 
  • Organizational Development Interventions: Has designed many team-based and leader-based interventions aimed at affecting behavioral change, mindset shifts, engagement, psychological safety, trust, effectiveness, and inclusion. 
  • Executive Education Delivery: Has facilitated a wide range of leadership development sessions, from brief workshops lasting a few hours to immersive, week-long programs. Experience includes delivering multi-session content as part of broader learning journeys. Sessions have covered both single-focus topics like negotiation and comprehensive programs addressing multiple leadership areas tailored to the needs of specific teams or leadership levels within the organization. 
  • Coaching Skills Workshops: Was responsible for overall design, content, and quality for CCL’s coaching skills program known as Better Conversations & Coaching designed to provide individuals with accredited ICF education. 

Assessments

Selected assessment certifications and qualifications: CCL’s Benchmarks 360 assessment suite, Leader Network Diagnostic, FIRO-B®/FIRO-Business™, Hogan Leadership Forecast Series™ (HPI, HDS, MVPI), WorkPlace Big Five Profile™, Situational Leadership® (Hersey), Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®), CCL TeamVantage, Influence Style Indicator™, Change Style Indicator™, HeartMath Coherence Technique, Netform® Organizational Network Analysis, PerSight, Organizational Workshop (simulation), Conflict Dynamics Profile® 

Education & Professional Affiliations

  • M.A. Organizational Management 
  • B.A. Psychology 
  • Lean Healthcare Certificate Program  
  • Professional & Executive Coach Certification 
  • Certificate in Positive Psychology 
  • Former adjunct coach at the Center for Creative Leadership 
  • Co-author on CCL research insights paper, “Climbing to Peak Team Effectiveness with CCL’s Team Vantage Assessment” (2025) 
  • Author on CCL white paper, “Physician Leadership Development: The Foundation of Health System Transformation” (2020) 
  • Lead author on CCL white paper, “RUPT™ Canadian Healthcare: Addendum to RUPT™ Report for Healthcare: Disruptive Trends Impacting the Healthcare Industry and Their Implications for Talent” (2019) 
  • Multiple blog articles on resiliency for US News & World Report & Forbes (2012) 
  • Contributor to “Brief Stress Reduction Training in an Academic Health Center,” The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine (2010)