Shannon Houde
Walk of Life Coaching
Shannon Houde is an ICF-certified executive coach and talent strategist with over 20 years as a trusted adviser to evolving change leaders from directors to CEOs. Over 14 years ago she founded Walk of Life Coaching, the first international career development and talent advisory business focused on ESG, sustainability, impact investing, diversity & inclusion, and corporate responsibility. Shannon has mentored and trained 1500+ change leaders over 4,000 hours to maximize their personal brands to advance their impact careers. She chose career coaching to combine her diverse experience as a hiring manager, a business coach and an ESG consultant for Adobe, Deloitte, BlackRock, and WWF, after having started her career 20 years ago in recruiting. As a certified Goleman Emotional Intelligence meta coach, Shannon has been featured in the Guardian, Forbes, Huffington Post, Recruiter.com, Marie Claire, and Real Leaders and speaks regularly at international conferences including for Kering, GreenBiz, Hitachi, BSR and Net Impact. She also published her first book with Kogan Page, “Good Work: How to Build a Career that Makes a Difference in the World.” Shannon speaks Italian, French and Spanish, having lived in the Italian and French Alps and in Patagonia Chile. She holds an MBA from Thunderbird Graduate School in International Management and a BA in Sociology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Originally from Washington, D.C., she now supports change leaders from both sides of the “pond” but lives between Cambridge, England and Biella, Italy. To follow more stories like these, join Shannon for Impact Leaders Lab where she interviews senior sustainability practitioners every month on their insights, advice and tips to lead scalable change within companies.
LinkedIn’s head of sustainability on unlocking its ‘superpowers’
Peggy Brannigan discusses her plans to leverage the LinkedIn platform’s "superpowers" to help protect the planet and support green economic growth. Read More
How Rachel Madan found her fit in fast-paced consulting
Sustainability consulting is a growing area of need as companies ramp up efforts. Rachel Madan shares how she got into consulting, and what keeps her there. Read More
How Kathy Cacciola is creating a greener global food program at Google
A year into her new job as global sustainability lead of the food program at Google, Kathy Cacciola discusses the skills and strategies it takes to land such a prestigious role. Read More
How Noemí Jiménez disrupted the consultancy status quo
Noemí Jiménez shares insight into the challenges of launching women-owned and BIPOC-led ESG consulting firm qb., and why she made the decision to quit building an empire for greater work-life balance instead. Read More
The soft skills that make for success in sustainability
Ryanne Waters on landing her “dream” job at the World Wildlife Fund, achieving success in sustainability without a technical background and discovering mindfulness in the pandemic. Read More
HP Hood’s Robbie Lock on kicking off ‘Sustainability 101’ at the US dairy giant
U.S. dairy company HP Hood’s senior sustainability manager on learning a new role remotely, the value of being a generalist within companies early on their journey, and why not all companies want to lead from the front. Read More
How to be a ‘sustainability catalyst’
CDP forest manager Stephanie Cárdenas on tackling deforestation, the need to be a self-learner in ESG and finding the ‘perfect balance’ in her role at CDP. Read More
The Marine Stewardship Council’s Angelina Skowronski on selling sustainability, the upside of being an extrovert
The commercial manager for the seafood industry nonprofit Marine Stewardship Council discusses the importance of independent, third-party certifications for consumer products. Read More
Carving out your sustainability career in the private sector
The director of ESG for skincare company Rodan + Fields talks about how she created the role at her company and how she sees ESG evolving across the industry. Read More
Insider sizes up fashion's fair labor problems
Former Fair Wear Foundation partnership lead Christian Smith talks post-COVID priorities in global apparel, shaping change via an NGO and his advice to those dreaming of a job in sustainability. Read More
