Sara Canaday

Sara Canaday, Leadership Development Expert, Speaker and Author and is a recognized expert and author in leadership and career management who helps arm professionals with the strategies and practices they need to succeed in today’s complex and competitive business climate.

She partners with Fortune 500 companies who are committed to helping their employees strengthen their leadership skills, improve business relationships, and enhance their performance.

Sara’s professional career spans 20 years and includes sales, leadership, and executive roles. She served as principal consultant for Empowerment Enterprises before beginning her own consultancy in 2009.

Sara is a member of the National Speakers Association and the Founder and past President of the Austin Chapter. She has been featured in a number of publications and broadcasts, most notably Forbes, CNBC, Psychology Today, WSJ, and the American Management Association’s Leadership Wired. 

The author of two popular business books, You – According to Them: Uncovering the blind spots that impact your reputation and your career and Leadership Unchained: Defy Conventional Wisdom for Breakthrough Performance.

Sara began her journey working full-time while she earned an MBA. As she climbed the ladder of corporate America, she repeatedly observed a surprising phenomenon: the most successful people weren’t necessarily the ones with the highest IQ or best job skills. She recognized instead that career advancement was much more closely linked with how people applied their knowledge and talents — their capacity to collaborate, communicate, and influence others.

Because of this revelation early on, Sara developed an uncanny ability to pinpoint the pivotal attributes that could make or break a career, and she was able to convey that information in a compassionately candid way. Colleagues, subordinates, and superiors alike frequently approached Sara for her advice on overcoming career hurdles and developing strategies to increase their personal market value.

Sara Canaday

Despite reaching an executive position in operations with a major company, Sara realized that helping others to maximize their career potential was truly her life’s work.

Today, Sara is happily fulfilling that commitment as a keynote speaker, author, and executive coach.  These venues have given her the opportunity to mentor and support thousands of people in diverse situations, inspiring many of them to move from insight to action with dramatic career results.

As a keynote speaker, award winning author, and executive coach, Sara has a unique gift for connecting and communicating with her audiences to propel them from light-bulb-moment insight to strategic change. Moving far beyond the business-school basics, she helps people identify the barriers that are preventing them from taking their careers—and their companies—to the next level. Better yet, she provides them with specific strategies to remove those barriers and achieve success on a much higher level.