Cathie Leimbach

Biography

Cathie Leimbach, President and Senior Consultant at Agon Leadership, is dedicated to moving organizations from dysfunction and frustration to effectiveness and success. She is a governance, teambuilding, and engagement expert who provides organizational leaders with access to simple and effective
leadership best practices and personalized strategies. After working several years in financial management and business management training, Cathie moved full-time into the leadership development field. She shares leadership best practices to create healthy and productive organizations where people can experience the joy of aligned, cohesive teams. Cathie’s enthusiasm is contagious as she customizes and delivers programs to enhance business and leadership practices.
She has been a business loans officer and credit advisor, a financial management instructor at the college level, and the senior staff person of a non-profit offering professional development programs. Cathie has managed a workplace team of full- time staff, part-time contractors, and volunteer contributors totaling several hundred individuals, delivering five hundred programs to ten thousand clients annually.
Cathie has been walking-the-talk of effective “direct and protect” board leadership practices for over thirty-five years. She has served on a diversity of boards, and has held the position of Board Chair in professional, educational, cooperative, for-profit, and non-profit organizations. Her knowledge and experience give her the perspective to guide clients along the route to a healthy productive board.
Cathie is an accomplished meeting and retreat facilitator. With an extensive toolkit of interactive discussion and training techniques, she engages all attendees. Full participation enables organizations and teams to tap into the diversity of human expertise and skills within the group. This provides the foundation for developing synergistic strategies that greatly enhance organizational results.
Cathie holds a B.Sc. with a major in agriculture and a minor in adult education, as well as a Masters in business administration. She is a graduate of both Leadership Lorain County and the Ontario Advanced Agricultural Leadership Program. The Agricultural Institute of Canada recognized her as an Outstanding Young Agrologist.
As a founding partner and current affiliate of STRIVE!, Cathie makes extensive use of its bestselling governance book, The Imperfect Board Member, and its board self-assessment tool, The GEM AssessmentTM. Cathie is also a Premier Partner and Certified Facilitator with Appreciation at Work, the developer of The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace. As a Certified MERITTM Profile Advisor, Trainer, Coach, and Consultant, she supports individuals who are enhancing their self-leadership and group leadership behaviors. Cathie has received team development training on the Five Dysfunctions of a Team and is certified in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®. She is a member of the Cleveland Chapter of the International Coaching Federation.
As Cathie engages with her clients, she expands their leadership knowledge and behaviors, encourages them to adopt best practices that will overcome their organization’s current challenges, and coaches them for successful implementation.
Cathie hails from Ontario, Canada, and now lives in Ohio, USA, with her husband and two teenage daughters. She enjoys travelling, reading, and walking.