Donna Star
Donna Star is a certified executive coach, consultant, and founder of Donna Star Coaching and Consulting, where she partners with high-performing professionals—primarily women—who are ready to redefine success on their own terms. With more than 30 years of corporate experience spanning advertising, talent acquisition, and business development, she brings deep industry insight and practical strategy to her coaching work. A former senior executive, she held leadership roles overseeing North American sales, managing major global accounts, and leading organizational growth initiatives, equipping her with a nuanced understanding of leadership, performance, and career progression.
After a successful corporate career, Donna transitioned into entrepreneurship, building a thriving coaching practice focused on helping clients move beyond external achievement to internal alignment. As a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) through the International Coaching Federation, she integrates evidence-based coaching methodologies with business acumen to guide clients through career transitions, leadership challenges, and personal reinvention. Her work emphasizes clarity, accountability, and mindset transformation, empowering individuals to make intentional decisions and achieve meaningful, sustainable success.
In addition to her coaching practice, Donna is an author and thought leader who explores the realities of modern work, balance, and identity. Drawing from her own journey and decades of leadership experience, she created the “Archetypes of Balance” framework and is the author of Unsuccessfully Successful, with additional publications underway. Through her writing, speaking engagements, and community initiatives such as Moments of Momentum, she fosters spaces where professionals can engage in honest conversations, build supportive connections, and create lasting personal and professional growth.
• Certified Coach
• Predictive Index Certification
• Energy Leadership Index Certification
• Positive Intelligence Course (Shirzad Shameen)
• Intuition Training
• MIT Neuroscience for Business
• Professional Certified Coach (PCC)
• University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Harvard Business Review Member
• Harvard Business Review
• International Coaching Federation (ICF)
• WAM Theatre (Where Art and Activism Meet) - Berkshires
• Women's Rights Advocacy
• WOMEN Unlimited, Inc., The Women's Organization for Mentoring, Education and Networking
What do you attribute your success to?
I definitely worked hard, and I definitely see around corners because I'm highly intuitive. I didn't know how to leverage that as much early on, but I just have this ability to see what's going to happen next. I can tell when an employee was ready to quit, I just have a very strong sense of what's going on around me, and that helps me coach really well. I'll default to my intuition again and just say that I have a really good sense of what's going on, and that makes me better able to make good decisions.
What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Trust your gut.
What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
In order to help other people, you have to take care of yourself. One of the requirements of my coaching program at IPEC was that you had to be coached as well as coach. We have the same issues that our clients have, so I think the reason that I'm such a great coach is because I am doing the work on myself. I'll often say to people that I want to match your insides with your outside. If somebody comes to me and says they want me to work on their resume and LinkedIn profile, I'm not your girl, because there's so much more to a human than what's on paper.
What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think it's a really crowded field. Coaching isn't very well defined, and you don't have to be certified, so everybody can put up their shingle and say they're a coach. It's really hard to ask a coach what's their methodology, because coaching to me is an art and a science. I think there's a lot of confusion in the space, I think there's a lot of competition in the space, and then if you add AI into it, can a computer do what a person does? My answer is no on that, but I do think that there's just a lot coming at us in the space.
What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Honesty is always the top one for me. Integrity is very closely tied to that. My other value that I really believe would make the world a better place is to assume positive intent. Half the time I'm on with a client, and even me, you can create a story, an intricate tapestry, without any facts. People tend to come from the worst place possible, not the best place possible, and I think assuming positive intent would change that.