Erica Howard

Energizing Personal and Organizational Change

Strengths-centered organizational, talent and culture development coach

20+ years in global, Fortune 500 organizations, working with multiple level teams

Certified in Hogan Leadership ForecastSeries, Standout StrengthsAssessment and Strategic Workforce Planning

Serves globally from Austin, Texas

Erica Howard helps leaders create change. She brings an intersection of organizational, talent and culture development solutions to leading change that drives results. Erica has worked with globally-focused teams in Consumer Products, Financial Services, High-Tech, and Defense. She works best with teams committed to a strengths-focused, person-centered approach to make change happen. A few success stories:

Leading Real Change. Erica developed a “best in people” and “best for people” strategy, with a dual focus on employee engagement and well-being, and development of top leadership talent. At the center was an Organization and People Planning process that led to a 25% increase in retention of women and top talent.

Developing Best People. Created talent development and engagement strategy; led organization discussion about talent needs (skills, mindset, engagement) and best-fit strategies to address. Created employee value proposition messaging and career development tools. Designed and facilitated organization and people planning and that helped client retain 95% of key talent; increased utilization of real-time learning and overall individual performance levels.

Winning with Culture. After working with leaders to diagnose and design an “intentional culture”, Erica developed and executed a 3-year culture development roadmap and the enabling people systems, practices and processes. This work contributed to a 30% OPEX reduction, $2B in new business, and a significant lift in customer and employee engagement.

Erica is married with 4 cats and loves deep 1:1 dialogue, free writing, adult coloring and designing cool jewelry. For more information please see Erica’s business website, Flying Colors LLC and her LinkedIn profile.

“Erica was an outstanding partner in designing a rigorous process to rapidly ramp up a new team and develop a talent strategy for the company. I would definitely partner with Erica again and highly recommend her."
~ Catherine Lee, Senior Vice President - Human Resources, PRGX Global, Inc.

ALL Testimonials

Sheila Gray - VP of Talent Acquisition, Quadient
“Erica's work speaks for itself. Her client approach focuses on thoroughly understanding strategy, situation, and needs. If your organization has a vested interest in solutions that have measurable, and long-lasting, impacts then Flying Colors should be your consulting partner."

Laura Hoppe - Karrikins Group Affiliate
“Erica produced a beautifully designed and incredibly robust set of tools targeted at leading a region through culture change."

Vanessa Hill - VP of Talent and Diversity, Quadient
“Erica is gifted at connecting talent practices with business evolution and outcomes. She has great insight, speed in understanding, ingenuity and a wealth of ideas for driving culture and talent initiatives forward in a culturally cohesive way. Erica recently helped us conceptualize and create what we want to achieve together on our Inclusion and Diversity roadmap. I can’t thank her enough for her inspiration and brilliant ideas for how to create and evolve this strategy. When we launched our business and culture transformation, she did some amazing work on our Epic Competency Framework that enabled us to share our story and vision. She is an absolute STAR and I stand in awe of her. She would be a great partner for any mission requiring strategic and systems thinking, a boat load of creativity. Hire her!"

Lee Ann - Owner and Energy Catalyst
“Erica Howard is a star organizational consultant and coach who is simultaneously strategic and practical, expansive/global in orientation and highly authentic and relatable in her communications. She also brings humor and inspiration to all strategic dialogues."

Mary Kate Morley Ryan - Senior Consultant, MarketSphere Consulting
“Erica was my formal coach for a little over a year and has been informally coaching me since then. Her professional, passionate and results-driven approach to coaching has continued to enable me to grow and stretch myself. At a bird’s eye view, she allowed me to uncover more of my life and professional goals and values that now more directly inform my day to day decisions and priorities. Her coaching has directly resulted in greater satisfaction and enjoyment in both my work and life. At a more tactical level, she supported me in uncovering key tools to honor and protect my values. Her coaching has been life-changing."

Felicia - Dell Leadership Team
“We have a strong pipeline of leaders. They are contributing with their strengths while growing the company's capabilities in innovation. Several have already been promoted."

Mrs. Denay Davis - VP of Employee Services, Alberici
“We hired Erica to develop a negotiation skills learning series for engineering leaders. Erica performed a thorough business environmental scan that led to a detailed program design and subsequently to program delivery that captured our business needs and led to the application of key negotiation skills in our contract negotiations. No program ever received a higher rating and no consultant’s abilities were more complimented than hers."

Catherine Lee - Senior Vice President – Human Resources, PRGX Global, Inc.
“Erica proved to be an outstanding partner in rapidly ramping up my new team and developing a talent strategy for my board of directors. She came highly recommended by a trusted colleague, but at the same time, I didn’t know Erica so I was putting a lot on the line in working with her. She didn’t disappoint. Erica provided me with a custom workshop design that allowed me to quickly assimilate my team, assess their strengths, and frankly, make some tough decisions in a short amount of time. Following that, Erica led the team and me through a rigorous process to align the talent agenda with the business plan. I could not have been more pleased, and nor could the board of directors when they saw what we created."