Barbara Cheng
Barbara Singer Cheng is the founder, president, and CEO of Executive Core and leads a group of professionals whose mission is to more quickly innovate professional development globally. In the last 15 years, Barbara has worked with thousands of high-potentials leaders around the globe at critical turning points in their careers.
Barbara has dedicated her career to developing leaders who remain focused on the business priorities, anticipate the future and remove obstacles, and learn while they are making an impact on the business. Her clients range from successful CEOs to emerging leaders whose careers are fast-tracking. She enjoys working in large global organizations or helping executive teams of mid-sized organizations avoid common pitfalls as they evolve in the markets. Barbara is an accomplished speaker, facilitator, executive coach and consultant.
Prior to Executive Core, she held two SVP roles at Lore International Institute, made partner in her early 30's, and helped lead the organization through start-up to among the top 25% globally ranked before it was acquired by Korn Ferry International.
She often conducts strategic planning sessions with executive teams and partners with clients to build a talent management strategy closely tied to their key objectives. Barbara also helped pioneer the field of executive coaching and was responsible for recruiting and certifying a network of 250 executive coaches and senior consultants.
She has worked with dozens of publicly traded and mid-sized organizations to improve their sales and marketing function. She earned instructor of the year early in her career in her prior firm and consistently achieved some of the firm's highest evaluations for her speaking and facilitation engagements. Her previous role required that she act as executive sponsor and engagement manager for large engagements and teams of consultants for complex projects in sectors like technology, pharmaceuticals, engineering, and professional services.
Some of her clients include a top-five international consulting firm, Egon Zehnder, Halliburton, Cisco, Heidrick & Struggles, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, Bayer, Nordea Bank, Raytheon, Apple, BEA Software, GE Information Services, and various universities/nonprofit agencies.
She has authored numerous executive education programs, written two books, numerous white papers and articles including Recovering Executives at Risk of Derailing and Influence & Collaboration. Barbara has an M.A. in Counseling Psychology and B.A. from Bowling Green with dual degrees in Interpersonal Communications and Psychology. She serves on the board of the Executive MBA Council as corporate liaison and belongs to numerous professional associations. Barb is one of the founding members of the North East Ohio Executive Women's Track Association and sits on the advisory board of Flexhire.