Meet the team behind C3 Leadership.
Bill Dickinson
Founder and Senior Leadership Advisor. Program design, advisory and executive coaching.
Read his background
Chris Hanes
Senior Leadership Facilitator & Executive Coach. Coaching and facilitation, from one leader to a cohort of hundreds.
Read his background
Achraf Ouahab
Tech and Operations Lead. The systems the practice runs on, and the work of keeping them reliable.
Read his background
For work that needs a specific background, Bill brings in independent coaches he has worked with directly.
Dr. Mickey ParsonsExecutive and Leadership Coach
Cynthia LynchExecutive and Leadership Coach
Jeff HittnerExecutive Coach
Dr. Rachel M. ElaheeCareer Coaching Psychologist
Dr. Robert KovachExecutive Coach
Dr. DeMarcus PeguesSenior Executive Coach
Matthew BrackettProfessional Leadership Coach
Dr. Mickey ParsonsExecutive and Leadership Coach
Cynthia LynchExecutive and Leadership Coach
Jeff HittnerExecutive Coach
Dr. Rachel M. ElaheeCareer Coaching Psychologist
Dr. Robert KovachExecutive Coach
Dr. DeMarcus PeguesSenior Executive Coach
Matthew BrackettProfessional Leadership Coach
Most leaders were promoted for what they produced, not for how they lead. Closing that gap is more work than one person can carry.
Dr. Bill Dickinson
Founder and Senior Leadership Advisor
Bill was a Roman Catholic priest for twenty-five years before he founded C3 Leadership. He sat with people in crisis, in conflict, and at the turning points of their lives, and learned to hear what someone was actually saying underneath what they had decided to say.
He left the priesthood, took a doctorate in leadership development, and spent the next two decades building leadership programs for organizations that had none, at the Catholic Leadership Institute, the University of Georgia, and inside Cox Automotive. He founded C3 Leadership in 2015 to do that work on his own terms.
Every professional owes themselves two answers: why they do this work, and what it is worth.
The conviction underneath everything C3 does
He is at home in rooms that are skeptical of leadership training. Police departments. Distribution warehouses. Hospital administration. Rooms where the phrase personal development gets an eye roll, and where it lands anyway once the conversation is honest. Based in Atlanta, relocating to Valencia, Spain, with the practice continuing on an international footing.
Education
Certifications
Writing and affiliations
The people behind the practice
Chris Hanes develops and coaches leaders alongside Bill. Achraf Ouahab leads the tech and operations the practice runs on. Everyone else you meet on an engagement is named below.
Christopher M. Hanes
Senior Leadership Facilitator & Executive Coach
Chris coaches and facilitates with C3 Leadership, and leads Results Oriented Learning, LLC, his own coaching and learning practice. For more than twenty years he has helped leaders turn insight into sustainable action, from people managers through senior executives, in corporate, government, nonprofit and higher education settings in the United States and internationally.
He is a Certified Master Facilitator and a Professional Certified Coach. He has delivered leadership programs to a single team around a table and to global virtual sessions with hundreds of participants, and he prepares other facilitators to deliver established curricula without losing the design intent.
Coaching, in his words, is a confidential and client-directed working relationship. The client owns the agenda. He listens for patterns and competing priorities, balances support with challenge, and moves the work from reflection to accountability.
Achraf Ouahab
Tech and Operations Lead
Achraf Ouahab has worked with C3 Leadership since 2024. He handles the tech and operations side of the practice: the systems it runs on, and the work of keeping them reliable as the practice grows.
Achraf is also the founder of ACHRAF OUAHAB MEDIA LLC, where he leads projects, drives marketing and puts AI to work for businesses.
His background began in content and digital marketing, helping brands find their voice and build a credible presence online. That work taught him an early lesson: visibility only matters when people trust what they see, and trust is earned through consistency and follow-through.
As his responsibilities grew, he moved into project management. He learned that good ideas rarely fail on their own; they fail when ownership is unclear, deadlines drift and decisions wait. Planning with discipline, keeping people aligned and delivering what was promised became the foundation of how he works.
The arrival of AI then reshaped both sides of his work. In marketing, he focuses on making sure businesses are found and recommended not only in search engines but also in AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. In operations, he designs AI agents and automations that take repetitive work off people's plates, so teams can spend their time where it counts.
Today he brings these three disciplines together with a simple standard: clear plans, honest communication and work that keeps delivering value long after it is handed over.
Our coaching network
When an engagement calls for a specific background, C3 partners with trusted independent coaches. Each one is introduced to you by name before the work begins, and you are always welcome to contact them directly.
Dr. Mickey Parsons
Executive and Leadership Development Coach
Mickey Parsons partners with C3 Leadership as an executive and leadership development coach. He has coached more than 2,000 leaders, from executives at Fortune 500 companies to local business owners.
His coaching centers on the challenges leaders face every week: building high-performance teams, handling tough workplace conversations and managing their time well. He also mentors other coaches and supports leaders with business development.
He brings more than twenty years of managing and leading business organizations himself, together with a doctorate in industrial and organizational psychology. He is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Life University in Marietta, Georgia, where he co-created and teaches the Coaching Psychology track of the MS in Positive Psychology.
His clients get a knowledgeable confidante who helps them build on their own strengths and put their own leadership development plan into practice.
Cynthia Lynch
Executive and Leadership Development Coach
Cynthia Lynch brings an extensive background in business, psychology and coaching to her work with C3 Leadership. Her approach is collaborative: she helps clients build results-oriented strategies through insight, accountability and motivation, delivered with warmth and enthusiasm.
Many of her clients have reached a level of success and know they can go further. She coaches them to communicate with impact, handle conflict, give feedback, build executive presence, engage their teams and execute effectively.
As Director of Executive MBA Student Engagement at Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business, she coached hundreds of professionals and launched the EMBA Leadership Academy. She has also consulted for Chase Bank, Cisco, Centex Homes, Charles Schwab, GlaxoSmithKline and IBM.
She is an unbiased sounding board for leaders weighing strategic direction, a next career move or a new role, and for those building emotional intelligence to lift individual and organizational results.
Jeff Hittner
Executive Coach and Founder, Ambitious Dads
Jeff Hittner is an executive coach and leadership expert with 25 years of experience helping leaders and organizations transform how they think, lead and perform. He coaches CEOs and senior executives across five continents.
His approach is shaped by his own transformation. Fifteen years ago, he learned he couldn’t become a biological father and had to dismantle his old definition of fatherhood. Today, as the dad of two boys, he brings that lesson to clients: letting go of old stories creates space for new possibilities.
He was MBA Professor of Leadership at Bard College, where he built the curriculum for one of the first MBAs in Sustainability in the United States. Earlier in his career, he founded IBM’s global Corporate Social Responsibility consulting practice.
His coaching goes beneath behavior to examine the assumptions, patterns and self-talk that shape how leaders think, respond and lead.
Dr. Rachel M. Elahee
Career Coaching Psychologist
Rachel Elahee, known to her clients as Dr. Rae, partners with C3 Leadership as a career coaching psychologist. She works with executives, corporate leaders and small business owners on what she calls everyday leadership.
Everyday leadership means the practical skills that raise productivity, satisfaction and peace of mind at work. Her specialties are leadership development, character strengths, emotional intelligence, communication and team building.
Her engagements include Halyard Health (formerly Kimberly-Clark Healthcare), GE, HP and the Department of Veterans Affairs. She is also the author of Choose You! Reignite Your Passion for Life.
Her conviction is that to excel in our careers, we first have to excel in our personal lives, so her coaching treats work and life as one connected whole.
Dr. Robert Kovach
Executive Coach and Founder, Kovach Consulting Partners
Robert Kovach partners with C3 Leadership as an executive coach to senior leaders who want to raise the effectiveness of themselves, their teams and their companies.
He founded Kovach Consulting Partners, an executive leadership consultancy for global and complex organizations in technology, life sciences, financial services and industrials. For fourteen years he was part of the global executive talent team at Cisco, leading it for the last four.
Before that he held leadership roles across Europe for RHR International and PepsiCo, and taught at Hult Ashridge Executive Education and Central European University. He writes The Psychology of Work for Psychology Today and has commented for Harvard Business Review and the Financial Times.
He sees his role as a coach as helping to secure the success of both the leader he works with and the teams they lead.
Dr. DeMarcus Pegues
Senior Executive Coach
DeMarcus Pegues partners with C3 Leadership as a senior executive coach with a genuine passion for talent and leadership development, and for diversity, inclusion and belonging.
He brings more than a decade of advanced training and applied experience in organizational development, working as a trusted advisor, research-practitioner and collaborator to frontline, mid-level and senior leaders.
His work spans technology, higher education, government, consumer products, nonprofit, pharmaceutical and financial services. Clients include AbbVie, Bayer, Cisco, Columbia University, Google, KPMG, Nike, Tiffany and Co. and the United Nations.
He also develops the next generation of leadership and team coaches as an Adjunct Professor in the Social-Organizational Psychology program at Columbia University.
Matthew Brackett
Professional Leadership Coach
Matthew Brackett is a professional leadership coach, executive advisor and keynote educator for leaders at every level who long to lead better. He works with leaders on the human experience of power, authority and influence.
Before coaching, he spent more than two decades counseling leaders, families and people in high-stakes environments across seven countries, including service to the US Navy and Marine Corps. He works fluently in English and Spanish and understands how leadership is built under pressure.
His approach starts with the client’s own agenda. Coaching, for him, is a confidential partnership built on listening, honest questions and reflection, blending mentorship, advisement and education as the moment calls for.
His clients include AstraZeneca, Unilever, Eli Lilly, Tiffany and Co., Coca-Cola and BASF, and he also coaches through EZRA, John Mattone Global and the iOpener Institute.
Who you deal with, and when
A small practice only works if the division of labor is clear. Here is ours, and where our network fits.
Bill sets the direction
He scopes the engagement, designs the program, runs the executive coaching, and stays accountable for whether the work changed anything. Every engagement starts with him, and he stays with it from the first conversation through the result.
Chris carries the room
He facilitates cohorts and delivers programs alongside Bill, and coaches leaders one to one, from a single team around a table to virtual sessions with hundreds of participants. When an engagement needs more than one pair of hands, it needs his.
Achraf leads tech and operations
He runs the tech and operations side of the practice: the systems it runs on, and the work of keeping them reliable as it grows. That way the business side never slows the leadership work down, and every client sees one standard.
The network brings a specific background
When an engagement needs experience outside the core team, Bill introduces a coach from the network by name before the work begins. You can contact them directly, and Bill stays accountable for the engagement as a whole.
Tell us what your leaders are up against.
Tell us what is happening with your leaders. If C3 is the right fit, we will say so and tell you who would do the work. If it is not, we will say that too.
Leadership development and executive coaching. Based in Atlanta, working globally in virtual, in-person and hybrid formats.