Kari Johnson | Founder & CEO
Kari brings over 12 years of experience leading strategy, large-scale transformation, and talent development within one of the world’s largest financial institutions. During her corporate career, she advised senior executives, built high-performing teams, and led initiatives where clarity of thinking and quality decision-making directly shaped outcomes.
Through that work, Kari observed a consistent pattern: as leaders advance, challenges rarely stem from capability. More often, they arise from complexity, pace, and the absence of space to think clearly.
She built her coaching practice on that insight.
Kari is a graduate of a coaching program informed by an ICF Award-Winning Coach Educator. Her approach integrates brain-based insight with realities of modern leadership, helping leaders better understand the patterns influencing how they think, lead, and act.
Rather than offering advice or prescriptive solutions, Kari partners with leaders to slow down their thinking, sharpen judgment, and navigate complex decisions with greater clarity and intention.
Her work focuses on real leadership moments - transitions, high-stakes decisions, evolving roles, and periods of growth - supporting leaders in becoming calmer, clearer decision makers over time.
Because in today’s environment, how a leader thinks is their greatest advantage.
My Story
In 2024, I experienced executive coaching for the first time as a client. At that time, I was a senior leader in a high-pressure, high visibility role - and newly returned from my second maternity leave.
Professionally, things were going well. Personally, I felt increasingly stretched between the demands of leadership and the season of life I knew would pass quickly. I found it difficult to disconnect. My phone was always within reach. Even when I logged off, my mind continued working - replaying conversations, refining ideas, anticipating stakeholder reactions, and preparing for what came next. The pace never really stopped.
I knew something needed to change. Not my ambition or commitment, but the way I was operating within it. Despite recognizing this, meaningful change felt out of reach on my own. Coaching created the space I hadn’t been able to create for myself.
Through that experience, I began to see how deeply my thinking patterns were shaping my leadership, decisions, and energy. My coach didn’t give advice or prescribe solutions. Instead, through thoughtful questions and reflection, I developed my own clarity - and with it, a different way of leading and working. The impact was profound.
I experienced some of the strongest years of my career while operating with greater intention and boundaries than I had ever believed possible. That experience changed not only how I worked, but also how I understood leadership itself. It led me to pursue formal training in leadership coaching grounded in human psychology and neuroscience, ultimately founding the Tai Johnson Group.
Today, my work is rooted in a simple belief: leaders don’t need more pressure or better advice, they need space to think clearly enough to lead intentionally.
