Sara Olsen

Location: San Francisco, CA
Language: English

Sara brings over 25 years experience in building businesses with a focus on strategy, marketing and sales. She has worked in-house, acted as a consultant, and as an executive coach.

Sara started her career in technology, working for Autodesk, Frame Technology (now Adobe), and ultimately leading the North America channel sales and marketing team for Macromedia (now Adobe), where she helped transition the sales team from direct to channel distribution, and ultimately was responsible for over 30% of the company’s worldwide revenue. After receiving her MBA from Harvard Business School, Sara’s focus turned toward operations and strategy, and she founded, raised capital, created strategy and built teams for multiple startups, including Mobileplay, a digital content and advertising provider (sold to Good Technology).

Since 2008, Sara has been working as a consultant and executive coach. She led teams at boutique consulting firms SY Partners, Embarcadero Partners and GO Strategy Partners, where she focused on the intersection of leadership, strategy and culture—and helped executives understand that their vision can only be realized if they can align their teams behind it, and do the work required to build a culture capable of executing on that strategy. Through engagements including Amazon, Autodesk, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Softbank Investment Advisers, Old Navy, and The Coca-Cola Company, Sara has helped executives solve complex problems by clearly articulating the path forward, outlining what must change as a result of strategic choices, and identifying critical steps to making those changes happen. She has led executive level engagements in leadership engagement, sales transformation, brand strategy, marketing communications and product marketing.

As an executive coach, Sara has applied her years of business experience to help clients clearly see the system in which they operate, understand their role—both intentional and unintentional—in that system, and break through barriers to achieve their goals. She has coached executives in small start-ups as well as large corporations, and enjoys building long-lasting partnerships with her clients.

Sara is the past Chairman of IFOPA, a non-profit dedicated to finding a cure for a rare bone disorder. She is a passionate athlete, cook, reader and traveler.