Libby Gill

I’ve learned a lot about personal and professional transitions in my past twenty years in business. Starting my career as a tap dancing bear, an inner city teacher’s aide, a hand model (that was me in those Frisky Feast cat food ads) and a soap opera actress definitely showed me the best – and worst – ways to create a path to success.

After deciding I was better suited to working behind the camera, I temped my way through the Hollywood entertainment industry, then started my corporate career as a public relations assistant at a company founded by TV legend Norman Lear. Within five years, I was Vice President of publicity and advertising at Sony Pictures Entertainment, later becoming VP of PR at Turner Broadcasting, then Senior Vice President and head of corporate communications for Universal Studio’s worldwide television group. Later, I was recruited as the branding/PR consultant who helped launch the Dr. Phil Show for Paramount Studios.

Despite what I’d achieved, I felt like a fraud. I finally realized that I’d worked really hard to end up exactly where I didn’t want to be. So I set out on a mission to change my life and to help other people change theirs. Along the way, I shed a lot of unwanted baggage, as well as the extra twenty-five pounds I’d put on during those years of frustration and loneliness. After spending nearly twenty years working my way up the corporate ladder, I decided to work my way down the ladder.

Now, I’m an executive coach, guiding people to create lives based on their personal passions and professional goals. In addition to my presence here at PeopleJam, I have the privilege of sharing my success strategies as a columnist for the Texas’s biggest newspaper, the Dallas Morning News, as well as the trade publication Association News. I’m also a radio talk show host, author and speaker.
I’ve appeared on the Today Show, the Dr. Phil Show, CNN, National Public Radio, Fox News, CBS Early Show, The Hour of Power, and in Time Magazine, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, O Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Self and many more.

A first-time author in my mid-forties, my long-time passion for creating a better balance between work and family responsibilities led to the publication of my first book, STAY-AT-HOME DADS: The Essential Guide to Creating the New Family, which examined parental styles and family systems in role-reversed households across the country. I have also authored Traveling Hopefully which offers twenty-one practical tools to help you get over your baggage and get on with your life.

With more than twenty years in senior management positions in the corporate world, I understand the enormous pressures and difficult decisions executives deal with on a daily basis. And having built my own business from scratch (in midlife, by the way) I know first-hand the opportunities and obstacles facing entrepreneurs. Add to that a commitment to put family first and you’ll see why I regard “work/life balance” as a mission and not a catch phrase.

My primary goal as a coach is to help you locate the intersection between your personal passions and your professional goals. Whether you are seeking greater satisfaction in your business, health, relationships, or simply desire a deeper sense of purpose, I’ll guide you to set specific and measurable outcomes for success, challenge your own belief systems and limiting behaviors, and begin to take the actions - one baby step at a time - that will move you toward the life you want. With an individualized, client-centered, one-size-does-not-fit-all approach, I provide you with practical tools and applicable insights to make even the most complex situations immediately manageable.

I also host the live radio show New Directions, Sundays on KarmaAir.com, where I am delighted to offer listeners practical solutions to the everyday challenges of work and life.

A single mom, I live in Los Angeles and have two terrific teenage sons. When I’m not working or traveling for business or pleasure, you can find me chaperoning my high school junior’s marching band competitions or helping out in my seventh-grader's drama class.