Brenda Bence

Brenda Bence knows what it feels like to sit at the very top and realise there’s no one left to talk to.

Before becoming an executive coach, Bence spent years inside large multinational organisations, leading billion-dollar businesses for companies such as Procter & Gamble and Bristol-Myers Squibb. She worked across four continents, managed teams in more than 50 countries, and made decisions with real commercial and human consequences. The work was stimulating and high-stakes. It was also, by her own admission, isolating.

When Bence left corporate life to build her own global coaching and speaking practice, she was responding to a gap she had lived herself: senior leaders need a place where they can think out loud, hear the truth, and grow without performance theatre. Over the past two decades, she has coached more than 1,000 executives from 60 nationalities and 70 industries.

Brenda Bence is widely known for her thinking on leadership branding. She challenges leaders to understand how they are perceived in order to lead with greater clarity, consistency and trust. Early in her career, she saw a billion-dollar division she was leading rise from fourth to first in market share within 18 months, fuelled in part by a deliberate coaching culture. That experience cemented her belief that building people is how you build businesses.

Today, Bence works with boards and leadership teams around succession and transition themes. Alongside her coaching, she is the author of 11 award-winning books and a sought-after speaker, recognised by Thinkers50 and Global Gurus and inducted into the Asia Professional Speakers Hall of Fame.