Caterina was born and raised in Greece. Early on, her zest for travel, exploration, and self discovery took hold. Against her parent’s wishes, she left Greece for her undergraduate studies landing an internship that turned into a 3-year long advertising role in Spain. She elected to complete an INSEAD MBA in France and Singapore where she met her husband. Caterina graduated in 2009 when the global recession was greatly impacting her ability to land meaningful work. She read the book The Secret and used its teachings (among many other things) to land her dream job at Google in London where she worked for eight years.
While on maternity leave, she enrolled in a coaching certificate program and her love of coaching executives blossomed. Caterina was later awarded a 5-star-rating distinction for her internal coaching at Google. She is a big fan of relational coaching and infuses the tenants of acceptance, authenticity, and empathy (first popularized by Carl Rogers) when helping leaders develop. After having her second child, she resigned from her role at Google and penned a LinkedIn article that went viral… inadvertently lining up the clients she desired to truly launch her coaching practice.
We talked about needing a tribe of like-minded people to encourage you and a cocoon of closer-knit relationships that support you. We discussed the challenges executives face including fear of failure and success, the dark side of authenticity, dreaming big, overcoming the imposter syndrome, and that having emotions should be accepted by society more readily. She loves Michael Neale’s books, Marshall Goldsmith’s leadership ideas, Carl Rogers’ works, and Dorie Clark’s books about reinvention.
Caterina Kostoula is an Executive Coach, founder of The Leaderpath, and has coached leaders from Google, Amazon, Vodafone, WPP, Ferrero, ArcelorMittal, and several entrepreneurs. She collaborates with INSEAD, coaching Executive MBAs and Alumni. She writes about personal development on Forbes, Fast Company, and Thrive Global. In 2017, she was one of Medium’s top writers on self-improvement, life-lessons, and relationships. She holds an INSEAD MBA and an Executive Coaching Accreditation and Diploma from Ashridge Business School.
