Who We Are

The Story of ECHO

At ECHO Consulting, we know that in order for organizations to truly excel, they must be both consumer centric and employee centric. That's why our focus is on creating human centered, transformational consulting experiences that develop the leaders of the future. We believe that through our proven track record of facilitating lasting impactful learning experiences, we can help organizations cultivate strong leadership from within and foster a culture of innovation and growth. Our approach is fresh and innovative, drawing on the latest research and best practices in talent development, brain science and leadership development. Join us on the journey to building a better future for your organization and your team.

OUR STORY

"How do I get
more of that?"

That question, posed to one of our founders, became the seed that grew into Echo Consulting. At the time, she was leading a series of Agile transformation efforts at a Fortune 5 organization and realizing a level of success few of her colleagues could match. Her leader asked her what she saw as the difference between her and her peers. Her answer, which became the core of ECHO's philosophy, was that most of her peers were focused on leading work. She focused on leading people.

Maybe he saw the truth of that right away. Maybe he just wanted her to put her money where her mouth was. Either way, he challenged her: "How do I get more of that?"

She took up that challenge, and after a great deal of work that we’ll just verbally sum up here as one of those inspiring movie training montages, our first leadership development course was born.

Team History

Focused
Co-Creation

In 2017 while working as a consultant at a Fortune 5 healthcare organization, Danna Mokamba, in addition to her regular duties as an Agile Coach, designed and implemented a leadership development program. By the time that program launched in 2018, Danna had met Phaedra Beckwith and the two of them had begun to work closely together. Danna invited Phaedra into the inaugural class of the program and an enduring partnership was born.

Early in 2019 Danna and Phaedra were joined by Kate Smith-Babiec, and throughout 2019, the three of them collaborated to grow the program and were able to graduate 100 people by the end of the year. 2020 was on track to exceed those numbers but then, well, 2020 happened. The pandemic required the team to rethink their approach to leadership development and helped to evolve their offerings beyond exclusively in-person, to include in-person, virtual, and hybrid models of delivering interactive learning experiences.

Most recently, they founded a full-time consumer-centric leadership development program at the parent company’s organization, bringing together high-performers from frontline call-center positions and new college graduates through an internship program to create consulting teams who “learn while doing” by using what they learn in the course curriculum to solve real consumer-experience challenges across the organization.

Our Philosophy

Leading People, Not Work

You cannot lead work. You can only lead people.

The demands of modern leadership require us to create and sustain an environment where people of differing backgrounds, skill sets, and opinions can work together to discover innovative solutions to real business challenges. To create the right environment and bring people together requires an entirely different set of skills than we’ve traditionally associated with leadership.

The key trait of a modern leader is human-centeredness. This means putting people at the center of everything we do, whether that's putting our consumers at the center of our design, putting employees at the center of our policy decisions, or even putting ourselves at the center of our own self care routines. Human-centeredness requires us to acquire new skills, tools and knowledge, and to practice integrating these into our own personal leadership style. Building that deep and broad toolbox enables us to build better connections to other humans. Those connections make us better leaders.

And better leaders make a better world.