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ABOUT THE FIRM
A firm built on data, experience, and a genuine belief in leaders.
Harborside Leadership Partners is a leadership development and organizational effectiveness firm — a team and a network, helping leaders and organizations perform at the next level.
We exist for the pivotal moments in a leader’s path — stepping into a bigger role, navigating change, gaining clarity on what’s next. Our work brings a dual lens: the individual behavior change that helps a leader grow, and the organizational systems that determine whether that change lasts. That combination is what turns development into durable business impact, not just a good workshop.
We operate as a firm and a network — a focused core team that coordinates specialist consultants, coaches, and content partners around each engagement. That model lets us bring deep expertise and real bench strength to work of meaningful size, while keeping the strategy and standards in one consistent place.
LEADERSHIP
Founded and led by a practitioner, not a pitch.
Founder & Principal
The firm is anchored by Debra Setzer, whose career has been spent building leadership capability inside some of the world’s largest organizations — as an industrial-organizational psychologist, an ICF-credentialed coach, and an enterprise development leader. The methodology behind our work is hers; the network extends it.
- Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology — development grounded in the science of how people and organizations actually change.
- ICF PCC (Professional Certified Coach) — a credentialed, disciplined coaching practice.
- 25 years building leadership capability inside Fortune 500 global organizations.
- 150+ leaders coached, from supervisor through EVP.
- VP of Leadership & Professional Development, Raymond James Financial — led development for a 20,000-person organization, where 99% of participants reported measurable progress.
- 20 years at Franklin Templeton leading global talent development and coaching, including frontline and senior leader programs.
Style: empathetic and highly accountable — the kind of partner who listens closely, then holds you to what you said you’d do. Insight is only worth what you turn it into.
HOW WE WORK
We design and orchestrate — not just deliver.
Our team acts as both architect and conductor of your leadership programs. We hold the strategy and standards, and coordinate a network of specialists around them.
Define strategy
We set program strategy, objectives, and the success criteria that matter to the business.
Design & source
We build curriculum and issue RFPs to select and manage specialist vendors and content partners.
Set criteria
We define participant selection criteria and ground the work in validated assessment data.
Oversee delivery
We manage delivery across the network so quality stays consistent throughout.
Measure impact
We measure outcomes against the business results the program set out to move.
This hub-and-network model is why we describe ourselves as a firm rather than a solo practice. It lets us genuinely coordinate multiple contributors on larger engagements — bringing the right specialist to the right moment — while a single team keeps the whole program coherent, accountable, and pointed at the outcome.
RESULTS & IMPACT
Measured in progress, not applause.
We build measurement into every engagement from the start — because the point of development is a leader who performs differently, and an organization that can feel the difference.
of participants reported measurable progress in our most recent enterprise leadership program
leaders coached from supervisor through EVP across two decades
person organization for which leadership development was led at scale
Let’s build something that lasts.
Tell us where you’re headed. We’ll bring the data, the experience, and the network to help you get there.