PROFESSIONAL PROFILE

Cathy Simpson is a systems coach, leadership consultant, Agile coach, and Certified Scrum
Trainer who helps leaders and the teams around them produce results in the face of uncertainty. She works at both scales, with whole teams and with individual leaders, because a leader is never separate from the system they lead. Her gift is taking the complexity of how people actually work together and making it clear, practical, and human.

Cathy has spent 25 years building products and the teams behind them. She began her career as a software developer and web producer, helping build one of the first video streaming sites on the internet, and went on to lead teams and drive change at companies including Visa, Microsoft, Gap, Genentech, Disney, and PG&E. One of roughly 300 Certified Scrum Trainers® worldwide and a certified Project Management Professional (PMP)®, she is an authority on the adaptive, iterative ways of working that help individuals and teams keep pace with fast-moving change, especially as AI reshapes how work gets done. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC™) through CRR Global, a coaching approach grounded in systems theory and process work. On the leadership board of Agile Open NorCal, she helps produce and facilitate its annual Open Space conference, and she has presented on agile topics at conferences around the world. She holds a B.S. in Sociology from San Francisco State University.

Outside her client work, Cathy has spent over a decade mentoring women in STEM around the world through Tech Women and volunteers each summer at an Easterseals camp for people with disabilities. She lives in San Francisco.

COACHING STYLE

I coach the system, not just the individuals in it, whether that’s a whole team or a single leader or member. Even in one-on-one coaching, the system is still in the room, because we all work inside relationships and roles that shape how we show up.

A big part of my work is making visible what’s affecting how people work together. It might be something quietly causing tension between colleagues or teams, these can be the small misunderstandings or misperceptions nobody names that nevertheless create challenges or a process no one realizes is out of step with the greater mission.

My job isn’t to fix anybody but rather to help an individual or a team reveal themselves to themselves so shifts can happen with both fluidity and intention. I do that with warmth and a fair amount of humor because people are most honest when they feel safe, and sometimes when they can laugh. From there, the natural intelligence of the system goes to work, and people and teams create real results, even in dynamic environments of uncertainty and change.
Most change leaves people drained - I strive to help my clients find energy and inspiration through change.

Meet Cathy