CEO & FOUNDER
Emily Brenes
Emily is a strategic partner in the development of leaders and talent. She is an executive coach and leadership development advisor with more than a decade of experience as a leader, operator, and strategy consultant.
At Bain & Company, Emily led and implemented a global, firm-wide redesign of people development and performance evaluation. She also worked as an internal executive coach to consulting team leadership and a client-facing strategy consultant across healthcare, consumer, hospitality, and infrastructure.
From the classroom to the boardroom, Emily has spent her career focused on how to help individuals and organizations reach their full potential. She has led organizations through significant, high stakes changes and knows what it takes to achieve in high intensity, high performing environments. As a startup leader, she helped build and scale NYC-based education nonprofit Blue Engine to drive educational equity. As a leader on Bain’s internal DEI transformation, as a coach, and as an educator, she has advocated for and supported underrepresented communities.
She earned her MBA from the Wharton School at UPenn with a focus on General Management & Leadership and her BA in English with Honors from UC Berkeley. She is an ICF Certified Coach trained through Coactive Training Institute and credentialed by the International Coach Federation.
EXECUTIVE COACH
Nick Kim
Nick is an executive coach for founders and CEOs. He brings his experience as a venture capital investor and technology startup operator to his work with entrepreneurs and business owners (excluding those in VC-backed startups). Nick's coaching journey began in 2012, when he founded a group coaching collective in New York City with collaborators from Warby Parker, Artsy, Blackstone, and Rent the Runway. Since then, he has coached founders and executives in technology, real estate, media and entertainment, venture capital, and more. Today, he reserves a small number of hours to work with ambitious people looking for a partner to help them reach their goals.
Nick is a general partner at Upfront Ventures. He focuses on early-stage investments in hard tech and critical infrastructure sectors like advanced manufacturing and robotics, industrial automation, energy and utilities, and aerospace and defense. Before joining Upfront, Nick led seed investments at Crosscut Ventures and was an early employee at Warby Parker, where he was the general manager of the Home Try-On business. Nick also served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Human Ventures and as an investor with the Dorm Room Fund, First Round Capital’s student-run investment fund.
Nick graduated with a degree in Economics from UC Berkeley and earned his MBA from The Wharton School.
