Paula Giovacchini founded Gio Group, Inc. to apply her extensive consulting, training and coaching experiences to meet the needs of corporations, law firms and other professional service firms in the areas of business development, collaborative work relationships, communications and leadership.

Paula's corporate career extends over 20 years, encompassing the financial services, tourism and utility industries. She has held senior leadership positions in sales, operations and human resources at J.P. Morgan Chase (formerly First Chicago), Bank of America (formerly LaSalle Bank), JMB Realty Corporation, American Airlines and Pinnacle West Capital Corporation.

Paula has specialized in increasing sales for a variety of services and products; designing and implementing organization development and human resources initiatives to reduce turnover, enhance recruitment and integrate corporate cultures for merged companies; heading up an organization development department and providing executive coaching to enhance leadership skills.

Among her key accomplishments, she has:

  • Coached attorneys that resulted in generating new business during a 90-day sales program of business development training and coaching
  • Facilitated training, individual and group coaching for the managing partner and four litigators in a law firm on how to resolve their conflict and form a more collaborative work relationship so they could follow the firm's directive to increase revenue and attract and retain attorneys.
  • Coached a Gen X attorney whose manner was incompatible with that of the office; showed him how to adapt his style; also worked with a managing partner to understand and accept the young attorney's style
  • Created a year-long client development institute for a global law firm to cross sell services
  • Devised and executed a five-state plan to market a financial services product to a target audience
  • Developed and executed an enterprise-wide career management program for more than 6,000 employees that created a pool of talent to meet future employment needs
  • Facilitated regional programs to form 60 staff group professionals into a cohesive, productive team
  • Coached the top 25 executives of an energy company
  • Reduced employee turnover by 50 percent at a global financial services corporation and in a targeted program increased successful recruitment of new employees as well as retained existing employees
  • Implemented a 10-month Managerial College, consisting of core courses and electives, that expanded the leadership skills of over 100 mid-level managers at a bank

Paula is a certified professional coach from New Ventures West and holds a BA in Communications from Mundelein College and an MS in Organizational Development from Loyola University. She is a frequent guest speaker at meetings of a number of organizations, including the Chicago Bar Association Alliance for Women, Turnaround Management Association, Society of Human Resources Professionals, Legal Marketing Association, Association of Legal Administrators and The Risk Management Association. She is a regular contributor of articles to professional journals.

Paula's most popular speaking topics include:

  • Building Relationships That Can Lead to New Business
  • Aligning Generations to Increase Revenue and Retention
  • Engaging a Changing Workforce – Leadership Skills for the Future
  • How Smart People Can Use Emotional Intelligence to Secure and Manage Client Engagements
  • Difficult Conversations: How To Be Effective Without Intimidating or Caving In
  • Getting Work Done Without Authority – Influence Skills and Strategies