A Slam Dunk for Leadership Skills
“If you’re at a point in your career where you are leading people and organizations, this is something you will benefit from,” Assistant Dean for Executive Education and Revenue Generation Adam Sterling ’13 says. “As professionals become more senior in their careers, work becomes less about legal expertise and more about leadership. And that’s what we’re here to address.”
Sterling is on the first team of coaches, joined by Irene Liu ’06, Shana Simmons ’09, Mark Kahn ’00, and Ross Weiner. All but Sterling, the lead instructor for Berkeley Law’s VC University, have served as chief legal officer or general counsel.
The group plans to begin working with clients in the fall, and over the summer they provided coaching to a group of senior attorneys at Salesforce as part of a pilot program.
The initial roster is best suited to general counsels, senior in-house counsels, and law firm partners, Sterling says. But as the program expands, he envisions serving a much broader clientele, including founders, firm associates, legal service organization leaders, and Berkeley Law alumni going through career transitions.
Liu, who founded Hypergrowth GC earlier this year and has successfully built and scaled tech companies to multibillion dollar valuations through M&A deals, financings, and investments, is serving as the executive education program’s first executive in residence. She’s also hosting a Berkeley Boosts webinar series, Coffee Break, that features conversations with legal leaders from a range of industries.
Her deep expertise is complemented by Simmons, currently the chief legal officer at Everlaw; Kahn, a former general counsel who moved into executive recruiting; and Weiner, whose career includes multiple stints as chief operating officer and general counsel, as well as service on a long list of advisory boards.
“In my first executive leadership role, I benefited significantly from executive coaching, so I know firsthand the positive impact an executive coach can have,” Liu says.
The opportunity to work with an executive coach is not as much about advice as it is about pushing you to confront issues, solve them, and develop opportunities. “It’s a bit like therapy — a place to vent and reflect that’s also removed from your day-to-day work,” Sterling says.
As executive coaching becomes more common, offering the combination of leadership and legal expertise puts this initiative in a class by itself, he adds.
“There are a lot of law schools that will teach you to be a great lawyer, but Berkeley Law really stands alone in teaching lawyers to be great leaders.” — Gwyneth K. Shaw