Mark Ledden, Ph.D. is an executive coach, strategic advisor, and leadership training innovator. As CEO of KennXion, Inc., he applies his passion for collaborative sense-making to complex business problems, personal development, and elevating team performance. His clients include many of the world’s preeminent companies and professional services firms.
Mark’s work typically begins with making patterns and mental models “visible” so that clients can make intentional choices about them. Drawing from the disciplines of adult developmental psychology, systems dynamics, and continuous improvement, Mark works with leaders and teams to tackle problems as diverse as overcoming change immunity systems to optimizing business processes. As an executive coach, he is careful to balance mindset and “operating system” transformations with highly specific behavioral tactics, and he takes an empirical approach to change that emphasizes creating iterative experiments that test specific hypotheses, generate data, and support learning.
Prior to founding KennXion, Mark worked for five years as a Senior Client Communications Specialist for the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. In 2002, he founded Kenning Associates, LLP and coined the term “kenning” as the act of creating new sense from existing ideas or ways of thinking. Always pushing to add new ideas and approaches to his client work, Mark has developed a variety of collaborative sense-making frameworks and tools that have for over two decades helped individual leaders and top teams from Fortune 100 global businesses enhance their personal mastery and emotional intelligence, elevate their interpersonal effectiveness, and engage complex problems. He founded KennXion in 2023 to explore what is possible when his collaborative sense-making approaches are put in conversation with an “all-in” commitment to innovation, diversity, and client value creation.
Mark lives in Atlanta with his wife Susan and their children. He holds a B.A. from Earlham College, an M.Phil. from Oxford University, and a Ph.D. from Emory University. Mark is also qualified to administer and interpret the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, DISC, and the Leadership Circle 360.
Dr. Shelley Jones-Holt
As the Founder/CEO of Leadership Legacy Consulting, LLC and the visionary driving Family Legacy 5, a non-profit supporting the Leadership Legacy Academy, Shelley is committed to eradicating the school-to-prison pipeline and establishing pathways to success. Her advocacy extends to promoting cultural proficiency across all domains, developing historical, cultural and racial literacy, and deepening understanding of how systems operate and can be changed. As a KennXion consultant, Shelley works with Mark to help clients break down the mindsets and structural barriers that often lead organizations to think of Leadership and DEI as different things.
Specializing in cultivating organizational cultures rooted in equity, which is ensuring people get what they need, when they need it, in the way they need it delivered,
Shelley underscores the deliberate development of leadership capacity for creating, addressing barriers and sustaining this approach to equity in schools, communities, families, organizations and legislatures. Her educational journey encompasses a Bachelor’s from UC Berkeley, a teaching credential from CalStateTEACH, a Master’s in Urban Educational Leadership from CSU Sacramento, and a doctoral degree in Educational Leadership from the University of Southern California.
Shelley has broadened her commitment to include trauma-informed practices, restorative approaches and support for leaders during challenging times. Pioneering various firsts in her career, such as being the first African-American Administrator, Superintendent and Bilingual Educational Leader, Shelley creates a secure environment for discussions and guides participants to make collaborative decisions that benefit communities and foster diverse leadership success. She dedicates herself to aiding individuals, families and organizations in developing the skills to unapologetically embrace cultural diversity.
Miya King is a storyteller, collaborator and AAPINH speaker with more than two decades of experience leading communications, marketing and engagement efforts across a broad range of industries, including construction, architecture, higher ed and nonprofit. She recently worked with leaders in the Dallas nonprofit sector to create messaging strategies that surface the journeys, challenges and triumphs of their organizations. Miya has also developed organizational programming and executed numerous events throughout her career. She concepted and executed an annual entrepreneurship workshop for underrepresented West Dallas students, connecting them to local entrepreneur leaders and resources. Miya most recently worked with the Allstate Foundation to facilitate a youth empowerment workshop that convened rising and established service leaders from across the country.
Leveraging her experience creating and leading events, developing programming and managing stakeholder relations in various roles, Miya now serves as director of engagement for KennXion. In this role, she works with Mark to strategize and develop innovative coaching products and unique online courses. She will also continually mine client insights and identify best platform practices to improve user experience.
Miya is active in local efforts to promote awareness, support and action for the Asian American community. She recently served as a featured speaker for the annual Youth Empowerment Seminar, hosted by the Korean American Professional Network (KAPN). She also helped plan and execute the first public march in the Dallas metroplex against Asian American hate. Miya holds a Bachelor of Science in Management from the Georgia Institute of Technology.