Meet the ThinqShifters

Not a coaching pool. A performance team.

Leadership is ultimately about other humans choosing to follow you, and the hardest shifts happen with another human in the room. That's what ThinqShifters are for: senior, opinionated people who tell you what nobody on your payroll will, and stay with you while you change it.

Not a sympathetic ear

Think head coach for an elite athlete, not therapist.

A ThinqShifter isn't there to listen supportively and validate how you're feeling. Think of an elite athlete's team instead: a head coach, a strength trainer, a nutritionist, each a specialist pushing for peak performance, not just offering support.

Every ThinqShifter is certified in the Fabulous Leadership Framework and coaches from it: opinionated, specific, and comfortable naming the thing you've been working around. When something calls for clinical care rather than coaching, we'll say so and point you to the right help.

Support matters. But the goal is performance, and tough love is how you get there.

A Fabulous Definition

ThinqShifter noun

A senior practitioner certified in the Fabulous Leadership Framework, whose job is to help a person, team, or organization through a Circle of Suck® faster than they'd get through it alone.

Not to be confused witha sympathetic ear, a consultant with a deck, or a coach who's paid to agree with you.

How ThinqShifters work

Senior, matched, and on your side.

Senior by design

C-suite work is always led by our most senior ThinqShifters: people who've sat in the seats our clients sit in.

Matched, not assigned

You're matched with a ThinqShifter on the skills the work demands, and on chemistry, because candor only lands where there's trust.

One language, many experts

A Lead ThinqShifter can bring in others with different expertise, seamlessly. Every one of them works from the same concepts and philosophy, so you never start from scratch.

Never a back-channel

Nothing you say reaches your employer unless you explicitly ask us to share it. If they ask for an update, we send them back to you. How discretion works

The team

Certified specialists, each with a focus.

An international team that has worked extensively with global companies, cultures, and brands. Every ThinqShifter coaches a specific focus area, the way a strength trainer and a nutritionist both work toward the same performance goal from different angles.

Vipul Kapadia

Vipul Kapadia

Inspirer & Architect

Spent two decades in business transformation before founding ThinqShift: from Arthur Andersen and Deloitte to co-founding Qedis, a London consultancy that grew from 3 people to more than 150, and then North Highland's senior executive team. Vipul is the architect of the Fabulous Leadership Framework and works with CEOs and leadership teams on the shift their next chapter demands.

Gordon Hwang

Gordon Hwang

Coach & Problem Solver

A co-founder of ThinqShift who coaches senior executives and high-potential emerging leaders across Fortune 500 companies, start-ups, non-profits, and schools. Gordon spent seven years as a Vice President at North Highland, leading a 50-person team on a global Fortune 500 account, and six years on a school's board of trustees, including as chairman.

Vicki Shillington

Vicki Shillington

Chief Happiness Officer

More than two decades leading organization transformation, talent, and culture work, from London to Los Angeles. Vicki led North Highland's global People and Change practice as a Vice President, then, as Beachbody's technology talent executive, raised employee engagement from 4.5 to 7.5 out of 10 by building Awesome Manager and Superstar Performer programs.

Samantha Stear

Samantha Stear

Performance Influencer

A scientist who has spent a career making elite performance repeatable: Head of Performance Nutrition at the English Institute of Sport, lead nutritionist for UK Athletics, and Global Science Lead for performance nutrition at Nestlé. Samantha brings the elite-athlete performance-team lens to leaders, and is the author of books on sport and exercise nutrition.

Steve Polk

Steve Polk

Technology Innovator & Mentor

A technology leader who has built and scaled engineering teams at Walt Disney Imagineering, Beachbody, and Crain Communications, where Steve oversaw digital operations for 24 brands and launched an AI-driven Innovation Day. Works with leaders whose market, and whose technology, is moving faster than their org chart, including through the AI transition.

Amy Richter

Amy Richter

Pathfinder & People Reader

Nearly three decades leading client relationships and creative teams: a decade running advertising for the Atlanta Braves, then senior agency leadership as SVP and Group Account Director at Fitzgerald+CO and Vice President at 360i. That career taught Amy to read people first, and that instinct for what actually moves someone is what Amy coaches from.

David Watson

David Watson

Relationship Activator & Optimist

Two decades in enterprise relationships and complex sales, from global strategic accounts at PTC and Oracle to Vice President at Pariveda Solutions, alongside lecturing at the University of Washington and chairing a nonprofit board building rural clinics in Kenya. David focuses on leadership alignment, team dynamics, and the rising stars who are an organization's future pipeline.

The wider bench

Specialist ThinqShifters

Brought in by a Lead ThinqShifter when the work calls for different expertise or experience, all working from the same language, concepts, and philosophy.

Air Traffic Control

Not ThinqShifters. Just the reason nothing falls through the cracks.

Kalila and Bre-Ana make sure the scheduling, the handoffs, and the hundred small operational details actually happen, so a ThinqShifter walks into every session with nothing to think about except the person in front of them.

Kalila Terrell

Kalila Terrell

Air Traffic Controller

Keeps every moving piece on time and on track: scheduling, handoffs, and the operational details that let a ThinqShifter focus entirely on the person in front of them.

Bre-Ana Brown

Bre-Ana Brown

Air Traffic Controller

An energetic multitasker who keeps sessions, schedules, and handoffs running without a hitch, so every ThinqShifter can stay focused on coaching, not logistics.

ThinqShift + Thinqee

The same ThinqShifters, between the big moments.

Many of our ThinqShifters also coach on Thinqee, where the same framework, the same Cube, and often the same people are one tap away. ThinqShift is where the deep work happens; Thinqee is where it keeps going.

On ThinqShift
ReWire, Academy, and Orchestrate engagements, in person and one-to-one
On Thinqee
Sessions, messaging, and AI guidance between them

Find the right ThinqShifter.

Tell us what you're navigating, and we'll match you on the skills it demands and on chemistry.