Amy Beacom Ed.D

Amy Beacom, Ed.D., has worked in the field of executive leadership development and coaching, with a particular focus on issues of relevance to women leaders, since 1996. She was a founding principal in a successful executive development firm later acquired by Mercer, before returning to academia and private consulting. In that role, Dr. Beacom worked with Fortune 500 companies to help craft custom leadership development experiences designed to support large scale culture change efforts. A partial list of clients includes: Microsoft; Phillips 66; Johnson & Johnson; Pfizer; Unilever; General Electric; Novartis; Sprint; Arthur Andersen; Bank of America; Avon; MCI; Nike; Levi-Strauss; and Citi-Group.

In 2006, after the birth of her first child, Dr. Beacom envisioned a new field of executive coaching and consulting that focused on the unique challenges and opportunities faced by working parents – and their work organizations – specific to the parental leave timeframe. In 2006 she named this new type of consulting and coaching, “Maternity Coaching” (now Parental Leave Consulting and Coaching), and began to create the field through her doctoral research at Columbia University and her private consulting practice.

Dr. Beacom spent 9 years researching, designing, piloting, training, re-designing, and re-testing various organizational and individual parental leave supports to determine what makes effective parental leave practice. The RETAIN™ parental leave coaching model, pedagogy, and program is one result of her work. Dr. Beacom built RETAIN™ to be an unsurpassed leadership development, transition support, and culture change lever by basing it on the best of what she found from an analysis of over 30 years of research and theory in adjacent fields, including: executive coaching; adult learning; transition theory; organizational psychology; identity development; career and life stage; work/life issues; demography; risk and change management; and perinatal mental health; among others.

In 2014, Dr. Beacom founded the Center for Parental Leave Leadership (CPLL), the first consultancy in the United States to focus exclusively on parental leave, in order to provide companies access to the tools and support they need to enact thoughtful parental leave policy defined by transformative parental leave practice. All of CPLL’s work is research and data-driven, tested and continuously improved, built from experience, and delivered by an unmatched team of dedicated RETAIN certified coaches and consultants who all believe improving parental leave is their life’s work.

CPLL’s work has been incredibly well received. Amy has developed numerous partnerships with political, academic and business leaders to advance comprehensive support programs for parents in the workplace. The RETAIN Parental Leave Coaching Program™, the Parental Leave Transition Assessment™, RETAIN™, Making Leave Manageable™ manager training, Lead Your Leave™ expecting and new parent training, and related 10A Transition Touchpoints Framework™ for managers and new parents are a few of the business and working parent support products based on her work.

The Parental Leave Playbook: Ten Touchpoints to Transition Smoothly, Strengthen Your Family, and Continue Building Your Career (Wiley, 2021) is Dr. Beacom’s first book. It is also the first book to offer an academically grounded framework, process, and structured support for anyone navigating parental leave - practically, emotionally, and socially. Though written for parents, it is equally as useful and informative for managers, leaders, HR professionals, paid leave advocates, counselors, coaches, perinatal mental health specialists, grandparents, family and friends.

Dr. Beacom lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, their two children, two cats, one rabbit, and five chickens.