FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Introducing Wheeless Advisory Group
A new advisory firm for senior executives and their teams brings executive coaching, leadership team development and communications counsel under one name and one idea: Good Leadership is a Choice.
ASHBURN, Va., October 29, 2026: Wheeless Advisory Group launched today as an advisory firm for senior executives and their teams at the moments when leadership and reputation are both on the line: a new chief executive, a merger, a restructuring, a crisis, a culture under strain. The firm is founded and led by Charlene Wheeless, a four-time chief communications officer and senior executive at global enterprises including Bechtel and Raytheon, and a sought-after, nationally recognized keynote speaker on leadership. Wheeless personally leads the firm’s advisory and coaching engagements and will continue to speak and write under her own name.
The firm has two practices. Leadership & Coaching works with executives and leadership teams through coaching, team development and succession. Communications Advisory counsels CEOs, chief communications officers and executive teams on enterprise leadership and the decisions that shape reputation, trust and change, including the shift to AI.
“Most of the failures I have seen at the top were not talent failures. They were decisions made too late, or made well and not communicated effectively,” said Wheeless, founder and CEO. “Companies treat leadership and communication as separate disciplines. In the moments that matter, they are one. Wheeless Advisory Group works on the alignment of both.”
The firm’s work spans the problems that follow senior leaders into every room: taking a new role, leading through a merger or restructuring, speaking for the company in a crisis, and leading change when the organization is not ready to be led. Wheeless has built a body of work around each, including her keynote on what she calls organ rejection, the pattern in which an organization recruits a strong leader to make change and then pushes that leader out when change becomes uncomfortable, and her work with women executives on leading at the top without shrinking to fit the room.
Wheeless brings three decades as a senior executive to the work. She held the chief communications officer role at four companies, including Bechtel, where she led global corporate affairs for the $40 billion engineering firm, and AMS, where she rebuilt the brand ahead of its billion-dollar acquisition by CGI. She has guided more than a dozen merger integrations and counseled leaders through crises with legal, political and human rights stakes. She is a past chair of the Arthur W. Page Society and was named to the PRWeek 50 Most Influential list five consecutive years and to the 25 Most Influential Black Women in Business. She is an ICF-certified executive coach, a member of Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches, and the author of You Are Enough! Reclaiming Your Career and Your Life with Purpose, Passion and Unapologetic Authenticity.
What the firm offers
Executive coaching for senior leaders in high-stakes transitions and succession.
Leadership team development through offsites, working sessions and ongoing advisory work.
Mission Possible, a 90-day leadership team sprint that closes the gap between deciding, acting and delivering, with results measured in dollars.
Communications counsel for defining announcements, transactions and crises, and for communications leaders stepping into bigger mandates.
The Organizational Rejection Scan, a diagnostic and reset for organizations losing the leaders they recruited.
Keynotes, media, her books and her You…byChoice coaching cohort for rising women leaders remain part of the Charlene Wheeless brand. Executive coaching, leadership team and communications engagements now operate as Wheeless Advisory Group.
“The Charlene Wheeless brand is not going anywhere. Wheeless Advisory Group represents the growth of the business over the last five years,” Wheeless said. “What began as keynotes became coaching, then leadership team work, then counsel for executive teams at their most consequential moments. The firm gives that work a name of its own and a structure that can grow beyond one person. Leaders don’t become great by accident, and neither do the organizations around them. Both are choices.”
About Wheeless Advisory Group
Wheeless Advisory Group is an executive coaching, leadership team development and communications advisory firm founded and led by Charlene Wheeless, a four-time chief communications officer, senior executive at global enterprises including Bechtel and Raytheon, and sought-after, nationally recognized keynote speaker on leadership. The firm helps senior leaders and their organizations make clear decisions in high-stakes moments, communicate them with credibility, and build cultures that keep the leaders they recruit. Wheeless Advisory Group is a Charlene Wheeless company. Learn more at charlenewheeless.com/advisory.
Media contact
Shonna Stallworth · s.stallworth@charlenewheeless.com
Charlene Wheeless · charlene@charlenewheeless.com · 571.674.7476
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