WILD

Building Trust

Leading Self

Leadership Presence

Courageous Leadership

WILD is the most comprehensive, unique and engaging women's leadership program offered anywhere.

Our instructors are Certified Executive Coaches and Learning and Development Professionals.

Through experiential learning and coaching, WILD provides a unique immersion into leadership development specifically designed for women.

Participants will graduate with insight, knowledge and tools to lead themselves, lead others and lead within their organization.

Women Now Make Up the Majority of the U.S. Labor Force

What is your company doing to:

support the advancement of women in leadership roles?
create an environment that embraces diverse leadership?
provide leadership development opportunities for women?

Leadership development programs provide an opportunity for companies to retain their best talent and nurture future leaders.

The WILD leadership program can complement your existing professional development initiatives or provide your company with the complete program that you need for leaders who want to excel.

WILD’s ideal participants are women who are new executive leaders or mid-level leaders who are succession planning for executive roles.

WILD: Women Impacting Leadership Development, a program offered through Wildside Institute, provides leadership development training and coaching specifically for women.

Our learning environment will connect you with nature, with yourself and with others.

 This course includes:
- Four 2-day sessions over the course of 4 months
- Five one-on-one executive coaching sessions
- Emotional Intelligence Assessment
- Curriculum that includes:
1) Building Trust
2) Leading Self
3) Leadership Presence
4) Courageous Leadership
- All of the benefits of being a Wildside Institute Alumna
- Inclusion into the WOW (Women of Wild) Club

Learning Objectives

In addition to
the curriculum’s four areas of focus, participants will benefit from five one-on-one coaching sessions, an emotional intelligence assessment and ongoing Alumni Group benefits.

Every program is facilitated by our staff of instructors and certified coaches.

Building Trust:

Build a strong foundation of trust and learn to foster trust with a team
Clarity on how participants impact others
Why emotional intelligence matters to be an effective leader
Fire-building activity and fireside dinner on opening day

Leading Self:

Study and insight of self-belief, self-confidence and self-esteem
Empowered to be your own architect of future development
Course in self-defense to build self-reliance

Leadership Presence:

Core Values exercise
Personal leadership branding workshop
Improving the power of voice, speaking and communicating

Courageous Leadership:

Awareness of what courage means to self, the team and organization
Crucial Conversations workshop
Identifying and breaking through fears
Graduation and readiness to step into a more courageous leadership style

The Benefits of Providing Professional
Development Opportunities
It's no secret that employees want to be valued and one of the most powerful ways companies can demonstrate their value is by continually investing in their professional development. Everyone wins in a culture of continuous improvement. Consider the benefits of offering leadership and professional development opportunities:

Allows you to attract and retain the best talent
Improves employee engagement
Good leadership increases productivity
Great way to build a collaborative culture
Building the next level of leadership contributes to sustainability
Creates a deep bench within the organization

How Will You Make an Impact?

Through experiential learning and coaching, WILD provides a unique immersion into leadership development specifically designed for women. Participants will graduate with insight, knowledge and tools to lead themselves, lead others and lead within their organization with confidence.

WILD delivers an experience that is memorable, actionable and sustainable.

Register Now.
Class Size is Limited.

Our next WILD program
dates will be posted as soon as we can reschedule.

You will gain critical insight from our instructors and your fellow cohorts. Contact us about registering for our next WILD session.

Program days are 9am-4:00pm unless otherwise noted. All sessions will be held at E.P. Tom Sawyer State Park in Louisville, Kentucky. Hotel accommodations will be made available.

A unique approach that Wildside Institute offers is the curriculum that takes you into nature to connect, learn outdoor skills and acquire a new blend of confidence and self-esteem that strengthens your leadership style.

When you’re a WOW (Woman of Wild), you’re in the company of exceptional female leaders who have demonstrated that they can achieve their personal goals, maintain a positive influence within their organization and affect the continued success of others. Once you graduate, you will enjoy the camaraderie of the Wildside Institute Alumni Group as they network, learn and collaborate at special events, exclusive programs and virtual sessions. All alumni also have the benefit of discounted future programs.

We look forward to talking with you about your WILD journey.

WILD is for individuals, but perfect for groups within the same organization. Ask us about how you can send multiple employees to a WILD program or how we can provide a program within your organization.

For more information about Wildside Institute, click here or explore the other tabs at the top of the page.

If you would prefer not to come to Kentucky, we can take our WILD program to you. Contact us to explore your options.

Our Instructors are Certified Executive Coaches
and Learning and Development Professionals

The instructors at Wildside Institute are conversational, consultative and coaching in their approach.
The WILD team consists of ICF Certified Coaches and learning and development professionals.

Belinda Gates, ACC, Executive Coach
Founder of Wildside Institute
Owner, Compass Enterprise, LLC
For her role with WILD, Belinda will provide overall direction of the programs, executive coaching and experiential learning instruction for a variety of topics, depending on the agenda.
Click here for more information.

Michelle Krebs, ACC, Vice President, Women's Leadership Development
Michelle recently retired from her position as Director of Coaching for North America and Latin America for GlaxoSmithKline, Inc. (GSK). She has 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry leading and coaching leaders and their teams. Michelle has successfully led teams across Sales, Strategic Planning, Operations and Human Resources. Her coaching experience has focused on executives transitioning from one leadership level to the next to achieve immediate success and coaching leaders on executive presence, organizational influence, leading complex global transformations, and creating high performing teams. In addition to Michelle’s executive coaching experience, she has extensive experience in working with women’s leadership initiatives including the creation of group coaching circles development program and developing a leadership conference for women of color and women in Latin America. Michelle has a B.S., Marketing from the University of Kentucky.

Donna Tremblay, Director of Learning and Development
Donna offers 30+ years of experience in a variety of sectors. Currently, she spearheads corporate training, learning, and development initiatives for a leading organization supporting 1,500 leaders and associates. She works directly with the EVP of HR and SVP of Talent Development to identify, develop, and lead people strategies aligned with key business objectives. Donna serves as a strategic business partner across 18 operating companies. She creates synergies between development needs and broader HR, employee recruitment, engagement, leadership development, retention, and other key priorities. Donna offers a myriad of assessments and leadership insights for WILD. She holds a Bachelor of Applied Science (BASc), Business Administration from State University of New York College at Brockport.

Henrietta Pepper, Branding & Strategic Positioning
When it comes to business-to-business, business-to-consumer, non-profit or even personal branding, Henrietta provides expert guidance and insight. She is founder of The Pepper Group, LTD an award-winning brand communications firm in Louisville, Kentucky that manages brand strategy development and implementation. After leading that company for nearly 15 years, Henrietta now consults on a broader level in the disciplines of strategic positioning, creating brand ambassadors, brand expression and discovering your WHY. She spent 20 years in senior management roles at advertising and marketing communications firms. Henrietta has served a myriad of clients in multiple vertical markets, including manufacturing, health care, financial, tourism, retail and more. She holds B.A. and B.S. degrees from the University of Kentucky and an MBA from the University of Kentucky/ University of Louisville Executive Program.

Lynda Stucky, Executive Speech and Voice Branding Coach
Lynda brings a unique learning offering to our WILD courses. When learning about your leadership presence, Lynda will work with participants regarding their speech, delivery, public speaking, tone, pitch and more. This is often times an overlooked aspect of leadership and it makes a big difference in the delivery of your message. Lynda is a speech language pathologist, coach, speaker and author. She holds a BGS, MA, Speech Pathology from the University of Kansas.

Craig Caudill, Lead Outdoor Skills Instructor
For our women's leadership programs, Craig will provide a variety of instruction, including self-defense, fire-building, nature immersion, compass and map, and more, depending on the course. Click here for more information about Craig.

A full list of additional instructors can be found here.