About Stop Meeting Like This
Stop Meeting Like This is a professional services firm that believes work can be both joyful and productive. We work side-by-side with optimistic, forward-thinking leaders to unlock the capacity of their organizations through better collaboration. Whether we’re developing the skills of individuals, designing new operating models, enhancing the health and effectiveness of teams, or coaching leaders, we help companies catalyze new ways of working that produce better business outcomes and enhance the human experience of work. We are based in Chicago but serve clients all over the globe.
Shani Harmon, Founder and CEO
Shani Harmon is the Founder and CEO of Stop Meeting Like This. As CEO, Shani’s job is to inspire corporate leaders to reimagine how work gets done and then partner with them to realize that aspiration. For over 20 years, Shani has consulted with Fortune 500 companies across the globe, helping them design and implement effective operating models, decision-making processes, and collaboration practices. She’s an expert at unraveling the complex problems that hold leaders and their teams back from achieving joyful productivity.
Shani has an MBA and Master’s of Education from Stanford University and a BA in English from Harvard University. She hails from the hills of West Virginia but now calls Chicago home.
Speakers - Program tracks
This fall, Stop Meeting Like This is partnering with like-minded organizations to hold The Work Summit, a two-day event designed to help senior-level leaders and HR professionals improve collaboration, elevate dialogue, build resiliency, lead with kindness, and aim for balance. Learn more about SMLT and the experts who are joining us below.
Baisic Ventures provides consulting and educational programs for team and organizational managers grappling with how to effectively leverage Generative AI. Offerings focus on tools and skill development that help to build a learning organization attuned to the specific (unpredictable) challenges and opportunities that Generative AI creates, especially as its capabilities evolve rapidly.
Mike Hochleutner, Founding Partner
Mike Hochleutner works with forward-looking executives to design talent, learning, and leadership systems so their people can collaborate with AI for outsized, sustainable results. He worked previously at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, where he was Executive Director of the Center for Leadership Development and Research, and then Director of the Stanford MSx Program. At Stanford, he also taught leadership courses, developed Executive Education programs, and helped launch the core leadership curriculum used in the MBA Program. His latest course at Stanford is ‘Leading Teams in the Era of AI.’ Prior to this, he worked for American Leadership Forum, Accenture, the Stanford-McKinsey GLOBE Initiative, was a US Peace Corps Volunteer, and co-founded a microbrewery. He graduated with an MBA from Stanford and a BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Mike lives in Los Gatos, CA, but spent his first 13 years in Chicago, where all his favorite sports teams reside.
EJ Burton & Associates supports executive leaders in clarifying their beliefs and values about expected employee behavior. As experts on workplace culture, they facilitate learning that transforms individuals and organizations in their relationship with one another. The result is improved employee engagement scores, less “quiet quitting” and improved brand attraction to potential employees.
Ellen Burton, Founder
Ellen is an executive coach, an international business and leadership lecturer, and a subject matter expert on workplace culture. I am also the author of the Amazon Best Seller, The Civility Project: How to build a culture of reverence to improve wellness, productivity, and profit. In her 27 years as an executive coach and consultant, Ellen has supported C-suite executives, executive directors, and business owners in establishing and exceeding their goals.
Ellen is an avid golfer and a huge fan of the Michigan Wolverines! But she still happily works with Buckeyes.
The Center for Trauma and Leadership supports organizations that face trauma as a routine part of the workday. Our resources and learning programs offer practical, easy-to-use tools that help leaders and teams move forward while navigating trauma. We partner with leaders and teams across sectors, including first-responders, government agencies, health and social services, journalists, and nonprofits.
Carolyn Murphy, Co-Founder
Carolyn is an expert in helping individuals discover how to lead authentically and making collaboration work for even the most complex teams. Throughout her decades of coaching, facilitating, leading teams, teaching, and working as a psychotherapist, Carolyn has embraced the “paradoxical theory of change” — change occurs when an individual becomes what they are, not when they try to become what they are not. Carolyn has 25 years experience working in corporate roles, including as Director of Operations at Cisco Systems. She has coached and consulted with all levels of leaders in over 30 client systems across tech, finance, pharma, biotech, government, and nonprofit organizations. She is a master at creating engaging, professional, and highly applicable learning programs. Carolyn holds a clinical master’s degree in Counseling Psychology and is certified by the International Coaching Federation.
She splits her time between Northern California and Western Massachusetts and loves hiking with her husband and their dog, Roxy.
Gretchen Schmelzer, PhD; Co-Founder
Gretchen is a licensed psychologist, executive coach, and consultant who has worked for 25 years with the complex issues of trauma, integration, and behavior change across every level of system from individuals, to groups, to large systems and countries. She is the author of Journey Through Trauma, published by Penguin Random House. Her expertise in long-term trauma was used to inform the design and delivery of a four-year, large-scale intervention for the UN in Cambodia working with survivors of the Khmer Rouge in a leadership initiative to strengthen the country’s response to HIV/AIDS. She is currently a faculty member in the Medical Education Masters Program at UPENN GSE, and faculty in the Executive Education Program at the Brookings Institute. She was recently featured on CNN with Anderson Cooper and Working from Home with Richard Quest.
Gretchen recently moved to Western Massachusetts from Philadelphia where she is surrounded by friends and books.
Flourishing Orgs helps clients cultivate positive leadership skills that unleash human potential and create flourishing employees, teams, and organizations. They offer executive and team coaching, as well as leadership development programs.
Robin Ross, Founder
Robin is passionate about helping clients cultivate positive leadership skills and create flourishing teams and organizations. Her evidence-based approach to coaching and leadership development leverages the latest research in the fields of social and emotional intelligence, cognitive and contemplative neuroscience, and positive organizations to help senior executives and emerging leaders gain deeper insights into how to foster psychological safety, enhance employee innovation and performance, strengthen communication and collaboration, and increase employee engagement and well-being.
Robin brings over thirty years of experience as a senior executive in the financial industry to her role as a leadership coach. From 2005 through 2011, Robin served as Managing Director of Interest Rate Products for CME Group, where she successfully led her team through the disruption and change caused by market automation and the financial crisis. From 2015 – 2019, Robin served as Executive Director of the Doctoroff Business Leadership Program at University of Chicago Law School, a selective certificate program designed to arm law students with the skills they need to thrive as corporate attorneys, business leaders, and entrepreneurs.
Robin is credentialed by the International Coach Federation as a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) and by the National Board of Health and Wellness Coaches as a National Board-Certified Health and Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC). She is certified in the use of DiSC®, EQi 2.0, and Hogan Development Assessments, and by the NeuroLeadership Institute in the Foundations of Neuroleadership, the emerging field of study that applies neuroscience to leadership development, change management, and coaching. Robin is also a certified teacher for Search Inside Yourself, the mindfulness-based emotional intelligence training developed at Google.
How Does She Manage is a women-led community offering tools, support, and strategies for achieving career success and balance. Led by two former corporate leaders turned executive coaches -and proud moms. HDSM and her team provide self-paced classes, a resource library, and a Facebook community designed to help ambitious moms manage time, set boundaries that actually work, build confidence, and connect with like-minded women
Val Jennings, Founder
Val Jennings is a certified executive coach. Over the past decade, she's helped over 1,000 professionals, many of them working moms, achieve balance in both their careers and family lives. As a mom of three, stepmom of two, grandmother to two, a former corporate leader, and now a CEO, she knows firsthand the challenges of managing it all without burning out. Val has over twenty years of leadership and management roles in supply-chain operations, customer service, sales, engineering, and human resources. She's a native of the San Francisco Bay Area and calls Sonoma County home.
Cindy Peterson, Executive Coach
Cindy is an executive coach and consultant with over 20 years of experience working in and with leaders and organizations from Fortune 500 companies to startups. She's navigated the pressure of working in the C-suite at a startup while pregnant, being a corporate leader with two small kids, and building her own business all while being a mom.
Currently, Cindy coaches and trains leaders and executives with a focus on women in leadership, all while being a mom to two active teenage girls. Cindy lives in Montana, where she loves practicing yoga, gardening, and exploring the outdoors with her family.
Speakers - Summit Talks
The Dandelion Project is a professional services firm helping to forge a future in which businesses have a net positive impact on their ecosystems. Our work takes two forms: 1) innovate, discover, and communicate strategies that generate meaningful value for all stakeholders; 2) help organizations implement those strategies by transforming business models, governance structures, practices, and policies.
Renee Cullinan, Founder
For over 30 years, Renee’s work has been all about bringing big ideas to life – iteratively moving between vision, strategy, action, and impact. She untangles complex topics, connects dots, communicates nuanced conclusions, and structures work so teams make consistent progress toward meaningful outcomes. Though their roots are in the Midwest, Renee and her family live in Marin County, California.
Khalilah Shakir Lyons, Founder, Strategist, and Culture Transformer
Khalilah Shakir Lyons is committed to helping individuals and organizations answer pivotal moments with clarity, confidence, and impact. As the creator of Answer the Moment and B-List Living, she redefines leadership, purpose, and success by championing equity-centered empowerment and fostering thriving workplaces and communities where people feel valued, seen, and positioned to succeed.
With over 20 years of experience, Khalilah has partnered with top global, national, and local corporations, nonprofits, and startups — including General Mills, YMCA, Ronald McDonald House Charities, Aurrera Health Group, Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center and The City of Evanston — to drive culture transformation, leadership development, and inclusive workplace strategies. Her expertise spans human capital optimization, adaptive leadership, and fostering resilient, innovative teams, making her a sought-after advisor, speaker, and thought leader. Recognized as one of Mogul’s Top 100 DEI Leaders, a Top DEI Consultant for 2024 by Teambuilding.com, and the 2024 Corporate Woman of Achievement by National Association of Women Business Owners - Chicago, she has been featured on platforms such as Chicago Access Network TV, Jamaica TV, Empathy Edge, and Living Strong Radio. She is a board member of Female Strong, advisory member to Focus Fairies, and past board member of International Women’s Forum – Chicago. She is also the host and creator of Behind Her Bio, an audio storytelling series that explores the real, raw, and revealing stories behind women’s titles, achievements, and leadership journeys. Khaliah has her B.S. in Psychology and Masters of Human Resources and Industrial Relations from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. She is a graduate of the Goldman Sachs 10k Small Business Program.
A dynamic speaker, mentor, and coach, Khalilah blends storytelling, strategy, and actionable insights to help leaders and changemakers navigate their purpose, embrace their brilliance, and transform everyday moments into extraordinary impact. She is the author of Prioritize Your Purpose Every Day, a guide helping leaders, entrepreneurs and everyday changemakers to live with clarity, freedom, and intention. Through coaching, consulting, and movement-building, Khalilah equips individuals and organizations to not only answer the moment but create lasting, meaningful change.