About My Thinking Partners

We partner with you so you can spend more time with your clients.

With nearly 50 years of combined experience working in the leadership development industry, the team at My Thinking Partners understands your market, your clients, and your challenges. Leveraging our marketing, sales, and product development expertise, our products and services range from marketing and creative services to topical Design Builder packages – customizable building blocks for your client solutions. You can try to do it all on your own, but why? Building a partnership with My Thinking Partners gives you more time to focus on your clients’ needs.

Kathryn Brendon

Kathryn Brendon is a founding partner at My Thinking Partners, with nearly 20 years of experience in the leadership development field. Her experience in a variety of areas – research, product development, marketing, and marketing strategy – gives her the ability to see all sides of a problem before determining the best path forward.

Kathryn is driven by helping others. She enjoys finding ways to make other people’s lives easier while also delivering high-quality work. She believes in the value of continuous learning, and is always seeking methods to improve and bring greater understanding to her work.

During her 17 years working for the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), Kathryn managed the product development process and product launches for multiple new leadership development programs and products, and served as the product marketing manager for CCL’s flagship open enrollment programs.

Kathryn has an MBA from UNC-Greensboro and a BS in Business Management from Appalachian State University. She has continued her development by earning a Marketing Strategy for Business Leaders certificate from eCornell, product management certifications from Pragmatic Institute, and she has attended several leadership development programs through the Center for Creative Leadership.

Contact Kathryn at kathryn@mythinkingpartners.com

Susan Smith

Susan Smith is a founding partner at My Thinking Partners, with a background in marketing, market research, marketing strategy, sales, and operations. She spent over 35 years in leadership development and banking.

Susan enjoys solving problems as well as taking a large amount of data and transforming it into digestible nuggets. Her mantra is that you have to deliver the sizzle with the steak.

One of Susan’s proudest achievements was helping to grow the Center for Creative Leadership’s largest product line by over 50% in four years by implementing a yield management approach and accurate forecast model that is still used today. She likes to strategically think through a problem and then determine the best tactics to implement it.

Susan has an MBA from UNC-Greensboro and a BA in Journalism from UNC-Chapel Hill. She has attended several of CCL’s leadership programs and Sirius Decisions’ and Pragmatic Institute’s marketing programs–to name a few. She holds several certifications: CCL feedback coach, CCL’s 360 assessment suite, WorkPlace Big Five, 4MAT, and Pragmatic Institute’s Product Management series. Susan has served on the board of directors for ISA, the association for learning providers, since 2012.

Contact Susan at susan@mythinkingpartners.com