Executive Coaching / Professional Consulting
ABOUT CYNDIE
I'm a global HR executive, certified executive coach, and founder of Higher, LLC, with over 20 years of experience helping organizations transform leadership, culture, and talent strategy. I partner with CEOs, founders, and executive teams to build practical solutions that unlock leadership capability and drive real, measurable results — not just plans that sit on a shelf.
My path here started at The Dow Chemical Company, where I built my foundation in HR across plant and business operations. From there, I spent almost two decades in progressive HR leadership roles at GKN Driveline / GKN plc (now Dauch), eventually serving as VP of Global Functions & Executive Compensation and HR Director for Business Process & Systems — partnering directly with executive teams across Commercial, Manufacturing, Engineering, IT, and more. I built and led HR teams of up to 18 people, managed budgets over $1.9M, and worked through everything from executive compensation design to labor relations with unions and works councils across multiple countries.
Some of the work I'm proudest of: leading a global re-engineering of talent and succession processes that delivered a 70% productivity gain and a 90% improvement in succession-plan quality. Consolidating employee engagement surveys across 5 divisions and 40,000 employees into a single 14-language survey — cutting feedback turnaround from 30 weeks down to 4, and saving $400K a year. And selecting and implementing a company-first global HR system across 15 countries and 10 languages, which cut HR administrative costs by 20% and helped shift the culture toward real collaboration.
Since founding Higher in 2017, I've focused on what I love most: leadership and executive team alignment, fractional CHRO work, and executive coaching — using tools like Facet5 TeamScape to help teams build shared vision and real accountability. I work across chemical, automotive, and healthcare, designing 90-day roadmaps that solve urgent people problems while building capability that lasts.
Outside of work, I love to travel, I am sports fan and have served on boards and as an advisor to several local nonprofit organizations.
I hold a Certified Executive Coach credential from CEC in Florida, I am a Facet5 Certified Associate and am a member of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).
Our Vision
I believe every person carries more capability than they show day to day — it just needs the right conditions to come out. When individuals grow into more mindful, confident leaders, teams start operating differently: less friction, more trust, faster decisions. And when that happens at scale, it shows up exactly where it needs to — in the organizational transformation you're trying to drive and the results your CEO or board is actually counting on.
Our Mission
What if every person had the tools to excel, not just get by — and what if that excellence rolled all the way up to the business outcomes leadership is accountable for? That's the work. I start with individuals: stripping out the conflict that drains people, building real accountability, and helping them lean into what makes them uniquely good. That strength becomes team performance. Team performance becomes organizational transformation. And organizational transformation is how you deliver the results your CEO or board expects — not as a side effect, but as the point.