MEET OUR TEAM

For over 35 years Jim Brault has helped individuals, teams and organizations realize their potential. He is a trusted advisor and master coach to global business leaders, teams and individuals, helping them attain remarkable professional success and personal fulfillment. 

He has held Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer roles for companies ranging from $300m to $6.5b (including a Fortune 500 CHRO role), and has been a Board Director and CHRO for a publicly listed technology company in the UK. A highly effective Global HR Executive and Coach, Jim has deep experience optimizing the power of people and teams in large corporations, start-ups, and organizations that are scaling. 

Jim was involved in 15 acquisitions with over 15,000 employees in 36 countries, ranging in size from $15m to $2b in revenue, and 30 to 3,000 employees – all of which needed to create new cultures. He has lived and worked in the UK, Vancouver Canada, and the US. 

He has helped transition family run business to subsidiaries of publicly held companies, with year over year revenue growth averaging 20 – 28%, and designed and developed an award winning Global Leadership Development program for early career high potentials.

He has helped businesses increase Employee Engagement 15% on a year over year basis, and has trained leaders and their teams on mental toughness and resiliency, emotional awareness and authenticity, and a Mission > Team > Self mentality as a top trainer and C-suite leader at Unbeatable Mind / SEALFIT, founded by U.S. Navy SEAL Commander (retired) and New York Times / Wall Street Journal Best Selling Author Mark Divine.

He has a Master’s degree in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from SUNY Binghamton. For four years he owned and operated one of the most successful franchises of the world’s leading business strategist Tony Robbins. 

Jim is the author of four books: Lessons from the Masters, The Winning Mindset, A Path of Mastery, and Easy Makes Us Weak: Forging Mental Toughness, Resilience and Character. He and his wife Jessie have been happily married since 1984, and have 3 adult children and 6 grandchildren and live in upstate New York.
 

Joanne Panarisi-Bottone brings over 25 years of experience in not-for-profit organizations, higher education and as the Founder of Intrinsic Wisdom Coaching, LLC. 

Ms. Panarisi-Bottone has held leadership positions as Executive Director, Director, and Coach during significant times of organizational change in the areas of Child Welfare-Mental Health, Senior Living Continuum of Care, and Affordable Housing-Neighborhood Revitalization.

From a very early age Joanne has been fueled by her social justice heart and has always been perceptively aware of systemic bias both personally and professionally. For this reason, her studies have without exception, focused on personal and professional transformation. Her unwavering passion for leadership, team, and organizational development has always been driven by her ability to naturally see gaps of inequity in organizational leadership and professional development opportunities.

Due to her keen insight, she has always been consciously aware that what we now refer to as "toxic work environments and relational-occupational trauma", would one day catch up to us. This time of transformational change in our world, is an opportune and critical time to check how we operate as a team and as leaders at work, at home and within ourselves. 

Joanne works with Executives and Senior Leaders committed to leadership and team development for themselves and their direct reports, creating a culture of inclusivity and leveraging strengths from understanding and honoring diversity on multiple levels. It has been demonstrated time and time again that INSIGHT + ACTION = RESULTS.

In addition to her experience, she carries numerous team development and advanced coaching certifications. She is certified in Everything DiSC Assessments and as a Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team trainer. Joanne is a member of the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and active member of the ICF Upstate New York Chapter programming committee. In 2019 she received her Executive Coaching Certification from the Warner School of Education at the University of Rochester and holds a Master of Social Work degree, with a certification in Women’s Studies, from Syracuse University.

Ms. Panarisi-Bottone is currently working toward an advanced leadership coaching certification in Neuroscience, Coaching and Relational Trauma to be completed by May 2023.

Joanne and her wife Alison have been together since 1999 and live in beautiful Upstate New York. They are animal lovers with plans of adopting 2-rescue pups again soon!

As principal and partner in PURE Wellness Rooms, Brian Brault successfully led his team through intensive growth while launching an entirely new industry. The company was the 2008 recipient of Cornell University’s Innovator of the Hospitality Industry award.  
Building strong teams and fast growing companies is not new to Brian. 

He successfully led another company, Advanced Facilities Services International, Inc. for 28 years, earning it a spot on Inc. Magazine’s “500 Fastest Growing Companies” list, employing over 300 people. AFS ranked as one of the top private companies in Western, New York for eight years straight. Brian’s proudest award is when this company was named one of the best companies to work for in WNY. 

Brian is a sought after Entrepreneurial and Leadership Coach.  He served on the Global Board of Directors for the Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) with over 14,000 worldwide members, and recently held the position of Chairman of the Board for EO. There he worked to mobilize entrepreneurs around the world to leverage their skills and passion to make the world a better place. This culminated in a partnership with the United Nations. 

He also serves as a chair and facilitator of the Entrepreneurial Master’s Program, and created the Key Executive Program to facilitate executive level education for entrepreneurs and their leadership teams.
Brian is an executive coach, speaker, forum trainer and retreat facilitator for the past fourteen years and recently joined the team of Formators, guiding the Leadership Academy programs around the world in EO.  

Brian has been involved in a number of business acquisitions and sales, both with his businesses and coaching clients through theirs. 

A graduate of the University of Buffalo’s School of Business, Brian is very active on community boards and very active in his church. He has three adult children and six grandchildren. Brian has been happily married to his wife Jean since 1987. 

Lisa brings 20 years of experience in key areas of culture development, including talent acquisition, talent assessment and development, business psychology, organizational development, and employee engagement. She is known for her probing questions, and challenges leaders when embarking on culture work: “If you don’t mean it, don’t do it!”

Ms Cowdrey received her Masters Degree in Work Psychology & Business from Aston Business School, and has worked for several UK public service organisations and FTSE 100 technology companies. Lisa has primarily been responsible for culture, organisational development and learning, driving real behaviour change. She is an accomplished coach and holds the title Principal Practitioner from the Association of Business Psychologists. 

Lisa has been involved in a number of acquisitions in North America and Europe, where she focused on cultural integration. She travelled the world but lives in Cambridge, UK with her French Bulldog Iris.    

Bringing more than 20 years of experience in the Service, Fitness and Hospitality industries, Ms. Parillo is seasoned at leading transformation with international leaders in her role as a global facilitator at the Middle East Leadership, Central Eurasia Leadership, and Society of International Fellows Leadership Academies, associations of nearly 1,500 C-Level Executives. She also served on the board for The African Hope Network.

Heather has held positions as CEO of The Live Well Brand in Florida and Chief People Officer for Bone Daddy’s in Texas. As a former Director of Culture, she is skilled at the implementation of a values and vision based approach to all branding, messaging, hiring, training, coaching, development, systems, structures, and strategy. Her leadership and embodiment of the work brings the culture of organizations to life for the people they employ and serve.    

Ms. Parillo received her Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and International Relations from Boston College. During her studies abroad in Tokyo at Sophia University as a Junior Ambassador for the Secretary of Defense, Heather discovered her true passion of the comparative study of cultures and the similarities that unite us all.

She has been involved in a number of acquisitions and sales, and has played the role of "Culture Queen" in all of those efforts to ensure their success.

Heather currently lives in Destin, Florida with her two children, Cole (19) and Kendall (17). In her time away from work and training for extreme events, she enjoys the simple joys of life that are abundantly present on the shores of Florida she calls home.  

Richard Thompson is a husband, father, former Navy SEAL, and head coach of You vs. You Coaching. He absolutely loves being around people that are consciously choosing to grow and develop them selves in a way that is meaningful to them. He wakes up every day to be the example he wants to see in the world through his actions, and behavior.   

He has coached professional athletes and teams, including the Philadelphia Flyers, the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, groups such as EO and YPO, and organizations including Dolby and Freeman. He is a certified coach through SEALFIT, Unbeatable Mind, and the Life Coach school. 

It’s Richard's mission in life to support you in choosing courage, pursuing a dream that scares you, and creating extraordinary and outrageous results that matter to you. He will be absolutely relentless in that pursuit with you. He don’t care if it’s hard or challenging for you.  As he likes to say, I’m not working for you; I’m working for the person you will become, the person willing to be forged by their own desire to grow, to become, to breakthrough to extraordinary. 

Pri brings over a decade of Talent Acquisition experience working with companies like OpenAI, Meta, Uber and Yahoo in the ML/AI  and Cybersecurity domain. In the last decade she has helped 1000’s of people navigate a career change. 

One of the first questions she asks her candidates is the ‘Why’ behind their job search. Most people respond by saying something like more impact, challenge, growth, and sometimes a raise. 

Often Pri notices people end up looking for the same things in their current job within two years. It’s an endless loop and a very stressful journey. Pri helps her clients not only navigate their career journeys, but takes what she has learned from her coaching training to help them find more joy and fulfillment in their personal lives. 

Pri and her daughter live in the Bay area.