Lead Executive Consultant & Coach

Tara Kimbrell Cole M A

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Tara Kimbrell Cole is an expert in the field of Organizational Learning, whose leadership development and business expertise assists clients in Asia, Europe, and the United States. She is recognized for co-creating targeted programs with clients to solve organizational development and culture challenges with systemic solutions.

 

Ms. Kimbrell Cole is a strategic thinker, who facilitates the development of leaders and senior management teams.  Her business leadership experience in multiple Asian countries enhances her navigation of culturally sensitive and fluid environments. Following a successful career as a chief executive, financial services innovator, and international entrepreneur, Ms. Kimbrell Cole broadened that experience with extensive education in Organizational Learning, leadership and culture change.

 

CEO of Synovations

Ms. Kimbrell Cole is the founder of Synovations® Pte. Ltd., which serves multi-national organizations across a range of industries.  She co-creates, designs, and delivers organizational learning programs to build leadership, systems thinking, innovation capabilities, highly-tuned team collaboration and customer-centric culture change to optimize business opportunities. Leading the firm's service delivery in 10 languages, she collaborates with Synovations’ international team of associated Organizational Learning consultants and executive coaches.

 

A Culture Change Expert, Ms. Kimbrell Cole and  Synovations partner with MarketCulture, a subject matter expert in customer-centric culture, to assess organizations’ Market Responsiveness by measuring their customer- engagement capability against best in class. Synovations, engaging Organizational Learning’s proven methodology, designs and delivers the culture change.

 

Her experience in human and organizational dynamics, leading businesses, interacting with corporate and thought leaders, innovation and systems thinking is the genesis of her work with executives in some of the world's leading corporations. Ms. Kimbrell Cole customizes client programs focused on the development of leaders' personal mastery, collaborative capability, alignment of vision, increased systems understanding in the broader context of markets, community, governance and the environment. Ms. Kimbrell Cole's approach builds the capacity to foresee, adapt, develop, and implement profitable strategies in periods of rapid change. She works with executives in and preparing for senior levels of leadership (from Hi-Potentials to C-Suite).

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Selected clients include multi-national corporations and educational institutions: Microsoft, BHP Billiton, Standard Chartered Bank, Wright Medical Group, International Institute for Management Development (IMD), INSEAD, the National University of Singapore Business School and other global business schools.

 

Professional Affiliations

Ms. Kimbrell Cole is a Board Member of the Global Association of Society for Organizational Learning Communities (Global SoL), a global network to promote systemic learning, for the development of individuals, their organisations. She is the Founding President and Board Chair of SoL (Singapore).  She has a Master's Degree (2017) in Professional Development from Middlesex University, UK, has been an approved consultant by the Council of Trustees of the founding Society for Organizational Learning in Cambridge, Massachusetts (since 2007) chaired by Peter M. Senge. Ph.D., is a Professional Certified Coach by the International Coach Federation (ICF) as well as  a former board member of ICF, Singapore.

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She utilises a range of methodologies and practices acquired over 17 years of organizational development work and training, including: certificated in Coaching from a Systems Perspective by SoL's Coaching Community of Practice, Solution Focused Coach by CSFC, Multiple assessments by The Center for Creative Leadership, Greensboro, N.C. USA and Singapore as well as in the administration of the following  instruments including The Hogan Suites of Assessments, Market Responsiveness Index (MRI™), Coaching Mindset Index (CMI™), Meyer Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®), Lominger, Benchmarks® 360, Skillscope® 360, Firo-B and Influence Style Indicator®.  She is also certificated by Peter Hawkin's Renewal Associates and AEOC in International Systemic Team Coaching & licensed to use TC360

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Business Experience

Her financial acumen, solutions approach to business development opportunities, and international market experience are hallmarks of her career. Earlier she founded, led and was a Board Member of Global Trade Finance Network ™ Pte. Ltd. (GTFNet). As CEO of the software company that facilitated the finance of trade debt and secondary distribution of these assets, she initiated a comprehensive suite of patented products and services to provide financial institutions and other counter parties with a simplified system to complete export finance transactions and their secondary distribution. GTFNet provided a system to impact the growth of cross border trade, improve liquidity and increase revenue generation in both emerging markets and industrialized countries. Ms. Kimbrell Cole directed strategy and business development to deliver an innovative systems solution for that $2 trillion market.

 

She assembled GTFNet's Board of Directors and senior management team composed of international leaders from business and government as well as experts in trade finance, investment banking, and technology. Board members included Chairman, the late Ambassador Evan G. Galbraith, U.S. Department of Defense Advisor to NATO, Chairman of the U.S. holding company of LVMH and Bankers Trust International, UK, the late Rodney D. Galpin, Chairman and CEO of Standard Chartered Bank and an Executive Director of the Bank of England, and member the late Victor Frank, Jr., the founder and Chairman, Asian Programs Foundation and former U.S. Ambassador to The Asian Development Bank.

 

Previously, Ms. Kimbrell Cole led International Aval Asia Ltd., founded to serve as the exclusive Asia representative of BB Aval GmbH, Germany (BBA), and the trade finance (forfaiting) subsidiary of Berliner Bank AG. While providing intermediation services for BBA, International Aval Asia Ltd. was the first to introduce forfaiting for exporters and local banks in the Asian market and the secondary distribution of cross border receivables generated in Asia. Ms. Kimbrell Cole initiated and negotiated the exclusive representation of Berliner Bank AG's forfaiting operations in Indonesia and Thailand for BBA and International Aval Asia Ltd. She also obtained a mandate and financial commitment from the Board of Governors of Berliner Bank AG for the specific country interventions, as well as support interfacing with the respective governments. BBA grew to one of the largest traders of Indonesian assets in the forfaiting market and one of the most profitable subsidiaries of Berliner Bank AG by 1997.

 

During her career in New York, Ms. Kimbrell Cole was Vice President of InterDiscount Ltd., a boutique merchant banking company specializing in the financing of letters of credit and insurance company guarantees generated from private placement investments. InterDiscount delivered fixed rate financing of debt guaranteed by financial institutions and the packaging / distribution of these assets to foreign and domestic banks.

 

Ms. Kimbrell Cole has supported industry and professional organizations throughout her career; including as a member of Women Corporate Directors and the Society of Wharton Fellows. She is a former Executive Council member of the United Nations Development Fund for Women in Singapore, Deputy Chair of the Regional Affairs Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore. She was also a member of the President's Circle of The Asia Society in both Hong Kong and New York.

 

Ms. Kimbrell Cole has been a frequent speaker at conferences on business and leadership selected examples include the World Presidents Organisation (WPO) Singapore, the Triple Bottom Line Investment Conference, and the Global Summit of Women.

 

She was granted alumna status by The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri.

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