Linda Sharkey

Dr. Linda Sharkey is an HR Executive and Business Strategist with experience in Fortune 10 companies, speaking to, coaching and developing leaders and teams and driving talent development initiatives that support productivity and company growth. She is a founding member of the Marshall Goldsmith Group focused on helping successful executives become even more successful.

Linda Sharkey is a proven leader with experience and specific expertise in culture transformation, developing high potential leaders and building proven talent processes that yield better leadership capability. Her book 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 Sharkey currently is Executive Director of a worldwide 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 Dr. Sharkey was V.P., People Development at Hewlett Packard, responsible for establishing and driving the companys talent management initiative, performance management processes, career development, executive staffing, coaching, 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.

Dr. Linda Sharkey 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 also a past two-term member of the Academy of Management Board for OD as the scholar practitioner.

Prior to HP, Linda Sharkey 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. Dr. Sharkey also led several key cultural integrations and established a coaching process for executives, developed HR professionals as coaches and personally coached many senior leaders.