Tae Kyung Kouzes is a highly experienced executive coach with a track record of results in advising and counseling demanding C-suite officers and their teams, high-potential women and minority executives, and managers in transition. She began her coaching career in 1982 when the field was just emerging, and she has been immersed ever since in all aspects of leadership development. Her current research and writing examine the influence of growth and fixed mindset on leader behavior.
Tae’s passion for coaching began when she was a graduate student at The Ohio State University and did her thesis research on peer assessment. Her research attracted the attention of Pacific Gas & Electric in San Francisco, California, and they invited her to join the organization where she became the Director of Executive Leadership. At PG&E she developed and validated competency models for use in leadership development, selection, performance management, compensation, and succession planning. Tae also designed, developed, and operated an executive assessment center, making her one of the first practitioners of competency-based training and development.
From PG&E Tae went to U.S. Leasing, a subsidiary of the Ford Motor Company, in their Financial Services Sector where she was a member of the CEO’s Leadership Team and lead the Organization and Executive Development function. In 1992 Tae founded Moon Lopez and Associates, a management consulting firm that focuses on executive assessment and coaching and the related application of leadership and organization development interventions. In 2005, she also founded Kouzes & Associates, a leadership development firm specializing in executive assessment and coaching based on The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership® and the Leadership Practices Inventory®.
As a trusted advisor for four decades, Tae has worked across a wide spectrum of organizations, from startups to companies in the top 10 on the Fortune 500 list. A sample list of clients served include Apple Computer, Honeywell, Westfield Group, Toyota Motor Sales, DaVita, The Gap, General Motors, Clorox, DFS, Fireman’s Fund, Girl Scouts of the San Francisco Bay Area, Global English, Macworld, MagneTek, Nationwide Insurance, Ore-Ida Foods, Siemens, Levi Strauss, and Arvesta Corp.
In addition to her work with executives, Tae is a mentor and coach to students and young female professionals. She advises and assists students in navigating through and succeeding in their higher education experience. Tae also works with university graduates as they transition from college to the workplace, providing coaching on effective ways to develop leadership skills and advance in their careers.
Tae earned an MA in Industrial-Organizational Psychology and an MBA (emphasis on Human Resources & Organization Behavior) at The Ohio State University (1982). She completed doctoral studies (ABD) in Industrial-Organizational Psychology in the School of Business Administration at NCU (2018). Her undergraduate degree is from the University of Delaware (1978) in Psychology with minors in Biology and Chemistry. Tae is certified in many assessment tools, including Kouzes and Posner’s Leadership Practices Inventory® (LPI); CCL’s Benchmark; Lominger’s suite of leadership & organizational assessment tools; PDI’s Profilor and Executive Profilor; and the Bar-On EQ-i and EQ-360.