Mara Quinn · Executive coach · Portland, OR
Leadership work that doesn’t sound like a brochure.
Executive coaching for founders, operators, and senior individual contributors. Nine years of practice, ~220 clients, no certifications I think mattered. The work is twelve weeks of weekly conversation that ends with you doing something different on the Monday after — not a framework, not a journaling habit, not a 360 report.
About Mara
Operator first, coach second
I ran product and operations at three early-stage companies before I started coaching full-time in 2017. I know what your week looks like, why the 1:1 you keep deferring matters more than the all-hands you keep showing up to, and why the framework that worked for the last person who interviewed you is not the one you should be using. Most of my work is one of three shapes — see Coaching for what they actually look like.
Three shapes
Coaching engagements
Executive 1:1
Twelve weekly sessions, sixty minutes each. We pick three threads in week one and run them all the way through. Most common.
Leadership offsites
Two days in person with a leadership team of five to nine. Designed around a real decision, not a fake team-building exercise.
Career transitions
Quarter-long arc through the next role — the search, the negotiation, the first ninety days. For senior IC or operator transitions.
The work · 2017–2026
Nine years, two hundred clients
Clients on the work
Words from three of them
“Mara is the first coach who didn’t try to sell me a framework. We worked through three things over twelve weeks and I run my team differently because of it. I keep telling her to raise her rates.”
Jamie L.
VP Engineering, Series B SaaS
“The leadership offsite she ran with our team rebuilt how we run quarterly planning. We’ve stopped having the same eight-person argument every three months.”
Rosa M.
Founder, Series A consumer
“I started with Mara because I was deciding whether to leave my company. I stayed because she helped me build the team I actually wanted to work for. The Monday-difference is real.”
Tomás S.
Director, public B2B