Angie Lion
Angie Lion is a leadership development expert, speaker, consultant, and co-founder of Black River Performance Management
, where she helps organizations build confident, emotionally intelligent leaders and high-performing teams. Drawing from her background in healthcare, higher education, and organizational leadership, Angie specializes in closing the leadership development gap by equipping emerging and established leaders with the competencies they need to lead effectively from the start. Since co-founding the company in 2017, she has worked with organizations across industries to strengthen workplace culture, improve accountability, and foster environments where people and performance thrive together.
Known as the “Chief Soul Officer,” Angie takes a human-centered approach to leadership development, emphasizing self-worth, emotional intelligence, and internal growth as the foundation for effective leadership. Her work focuses on helping individuals overcome self-doubt, imposter syndrome, people-pleasing tendencies, and communication challenges that often limit leadership effectiveness. Through coaching, retreats, speaking engagements, and consulting, she empowers leaders to cultivate greater confidence, resilience, and authenticity while building collaborative, engaged, and high-performing teams. More than 30 organizations annually retain Black River Performance Management for its research-based frameworks, practical strategies, and measurable impact.
Before transitioning into consulting and entrepreneurship, Angie spent years working in surgical technology and higher education, including leadership and instructional roles at Idaho State University and College of Western Idaho. She holds both a bachelor’s degree in Workplace Training & Leadership and a master’s degree in Human Resources Development from Idaho State University. Angie is also an author and thought leader focused on personal transformation and self-leadership, recently publishing Emerge: Rise From the Depths, Realign Your Soul, and Reclaim What Matters
. Her mission is rooted in the belief that better humans create better leaders, stronger communities, and ultimately a better world.
• Transitional Intelligence (TQ)
• Navigating Midlife Transitions
• Idaho State University
• Business Women of Pocatello
• United Way of Southeastern Idaho
• NBSTSA
• Idaho State Assembly of the Surgical Technologist
What do you attribute your success to?
I used to define success a lot differently than I do now, and I think that's the key - how are we defining success and what's our definition? Success to me now is the quality of my relationships, the amount of free time I have, and how much I'm enjoying my life. That's a lot different than 20 or 30 years ago. I'm in this phase of my life where I really feel like I'm living in my purpose in so many ways that I don't feel like I want more. If anything, freedom and time freedom is what I'm creating. I'm creating a lot of space so I can have a little less travel for work and a little more time with the people that matter most to me. I love the work that I do, I just would like to be able to work more near where I live instead of having to travel everywhere.
What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say invest in yourself, in your internal self. Work on your insides, the stuff that matters. I think a lot of younger people focus on external things, like what they wear and what they look like and chasing external validation, and I really encourage you to work on the insights, because that's what lasts. Those skills and competencies and self-worth and value are going to take you a lot further than what the world's trying to sell you. If I could tell my younger self anything, I would say you're stronger and more resilient and more worthy than you know. Trust yourself, lean into your intuition, and start trusting yourself instead of getting your validation from external people. You know what you need. You just need to find really good people to look up to and surround yourself by those people, by people that will help you flourish, and you'll be fine.
What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
The values most important to me are being intentional with my time and calendar, movement and being in nature for stress management, and prioritizing relationships and family. My husband and I are really intentional about our calendar - we plan at the beginning of the year about every 3 weeks some kind of pause, and in the summer when it's slower for our business, that's a really focused time for family. We schedule our stuff and decide who we're going to spend our time with before anybody else gets a hold of our calendar. We totally block off what we want for ourselves and our families first before we start booking other commitments. I also value perspective - working in the operating room taught me that there aren't many things I see as emergent in business. Emails, phone calls, social media, none of those are urgent in my mind. They're important, but they're not emergent. Putting it into perspective of is somebody bleeding, is somebody's life at risk, helps me prioritize what truly matters.