Linda Sharkey

Linda is a proven leader with experience in Fortune 10 companies building teams and driving talent development initiatives that support productivity and company growth. She has specific expertise in culture transformation, developing high potential leaders and building proven talent processes that yield better leadership capability. Her most recent book co authored with Dr. Paul Eccher, Optimizing Talent is a groundbreaking work spelling out proven steps to build a talent rich organization and a must read for every leader who knows talent is the real competitive advantage.

Linda currently is Executive Director of Executive Networks, Inc.– a world-wide organization that connects key HR heads from the largest corporations in the world. She provides members new ideas, advice, practical materials and "early warnings" on key trends and innovations.

Most recently Linda was V.P., People Development at Hewlett Packard, responsible for establishing and driving the company’s talent management initiative, performance management processes, career development, executive staffing, coaching, employee engagement, and diversity and inclusion efforts. In this capacity she launched an executive development process that resulted in key actions to drive a high performance culture. She refocused the diversity efforts to be part of the mainline talent management initiatives and embedded them into the core processes of the company.

Prior to HP, Linda was with GE and held numerous Senior Human Resources and Talent Management roles. She established a leadership development effort for GE Capital that became part of the Crotonville offerings and was named a best practice by CEO Jack Welch. She led several key cultural integrations and established a coaching process for executives, developed HR professionals as coaches and personally coached many senior leaders.

Linda is widely published in the area of leadership development, culture change and executive coaching. She is frequently a keynote speaker at company events, Linkage, Talent Management Magazine conferences, Conference Board and the Organization Development Network. She holds a PhD in Organization Development from Benedictine University, MPA from Russell Sage College and a BA in History from Nazareth College. She is a past two term member of the Academy of Management Board for OD as the scholar practitioner.