Leadership Team Development · Executive Coaching · Keynotes

Less drag.
More lift.

In aviation, L/D max is the speed where a wing produces the most lift for the least drag. Your leadership team has one too. LD Max Leadership partners with organizations to find it: a bench of veteran executive coaches and facilitators, founded and led by Loree Draude, one of the U.S. Navy's first women to fly in a combat squadron and a 20-year veteran of leading teams at Google and Meta.

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Why "LD Max"

Every team has a point of maximum performance.

Pilots learn it early: at one precise speed, the aircraft gets its best glide, its longest range, its most performance for the least effort. Fly slower and you're plowing. Fly faster and you're burning energy fighting the air. That point is called L/D max.

Leadership teams work the same way. Most are carrying drag they've stopped noticing: unclear priorities, unspoken conflict, meetings that produce heat instead of lift. The work of LD Max Leadership is to find that drag, name it, and trim it, so the energy your team already has starts converting into altitude.

LD Max Leadership was built at that intersection. Our founder flew jets off carriers and led teams through hypergrowth in Silicon Valley, and our coaches have guided executives through the moments when the stakes are highest.

The point where everything is working in your favor.

How We Work Together

Built for organizations that are serious about their leaders.

Every engagement is designed around your business, your culture, and the outcomes you need, and staffed to fit its scope, from a single facilitator to a full coaching bench. Here are the three ways in.

Flagship 01

Leadership Team Partnerships

A multi-month partnership to develop your senior team as a unit. We start with where the drag is, then build the practices that create lift.

Discovery interviews across the leadership team
Facilitated working sessions built on the SOAR framework
1:1 coaching for key executives, matched from our coaching bench
Regular debriefs with measurable outcomes

Executive Coaching

ICF-certified coaching for executives and founders, as part of a team partnership or sponsored by your organization for individual leaders.

Confidential 1:1 engagements, typically 6 to 12 months
Each leader matched with the right coach from our bench
Hundreds of Silicon Valley executives coached

Keynotes & Workshops

Interactive talks that drop your audience into the cockpit and hand them frameworks they'll actually use. Customized deeply for every audience.

Conference keynotes and leadership offsites
Half-day and full-day team workshops
Every talk tailored to your industry and moment

The Framework

SOAR: how good leaders become great ones.

From founder Loree Draude's book SOAR into Joy, tested with leadership teams from the flight deck to Fortune 500 boardrooms. It's one thing to fly, to just drone along at one altitude. We want to SOAR.

Self-Awareness

Know your values and your strengths. A strength is something you do well and love doing. Most leaders are guessing at both.

Openness

Be open to feedback and to being wrong. Pilots who rejected their landing grades got sent home. The ones who listened made the top of the board.

Appreciation

The number one reason people leave jobs is not feeling appreciated. Appreciation is a leadership practice, and it's trainable.

Responsibility

Aviate, navigate, communicate. Taking 100 percent responsibility is where a leader's freedom actually comes from.

300+

carrier landings, 99 of them at night

20 yrs

leading teams at Google, Meta, and startups

+16%

team recognition scores at Meta under her leadership practices

Amazon bestselling author, SOAR into Joy

Organizations we have worked with

GoogleMetaMarriottPalo Alto NetworksCumminsBetMGMGDTNPowerU.S. NavyAspire Institute

Keynotes

Talks that start on a flight deck at midnight.

No moon. No stars. No horizon. Loree's keynotes open in the cockpit and land on frameworks your people will use Monday morning. She's a trained performer with an off-Broadway solo show, so your audience gets a storyteller, and your leaders get the takeaways.

Signature

SOAR as a Leader

A total electrical failure on a night catapult launch, three failed landings with 5,000 people watching, and the four practices that turn pressure into performance.

Crisis

Aviate, Navigate, Communicate

The crisis framework Loree learned in the cockpit and used the night Stephen Colbert skewered her startup in front of 1.2 million people. How leaders keep flying the plane.

Influence

Storytelling for Leaders

The stories we tell our teams to inspire them, and the stories we tell ourselves about what we're capable of. Taught to audiences of 2,000+.

The Team

No bird (or person) soars on its own.

That line is from our founder's book, and it's how we build every engagement. You get a team scaled to your organization, with one person accountable to you for all of it.

Founder & Principal

Loree Draude

Navy combat aviator, 20 years leading teams at Google, Meta, and startups, ICF-certified executive coach, and author of SOAR into Joy. Loree leads every partnership personally, from the first briefing to the final debrief.

Executive Coaches

The Coaching Bench

A hand-picked network of certified executive coaches Loree knows, trusts, and has vetted personally. When a partnership includes 1:1 coaching for multiple leaders, each executive is matched with the coach whose background fits their industry, role, and goals.

Delivery Partner

Day Six Leadership

For large-scale leadership team development programs, we deliver in partnership with Day Six Leadership, adding experienced facilitators and program capacity so engagements can scale without losing the personal touch.

About the Founder

Loree "Rowdy" Draude

Loree Draude was one of the first women in the U.S. Navy to fly in a combat squadron, deploying twice aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln with 300+ carrier landings and a place in the top 10 percent of her air wing as its first woman-qualified landing signal officer. She then spent 20 years leading teams in Silicon Valley, including at Google and Meta, where her leadership practices raised her organization's recognition scores 16 percent.

She holds an MBA from Wharton, is a Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative fellow, an ICF-certified professional coach (PCC), and the author of two books, including the Amazon bestseller SOAR into Joy. Her one-woman show about her Navy years, I Feel the Need, has played Hollywood Fringe and off-Broadway.

Loree has also been laid off, forced to shut down her startup, divorced, fired, and quit her job. She keeps a written list of her failures and shares it with the leaders she coaches. She also overuses commas.

What an Engagement Looks Like

Three steps, no mystery.

Step 1

Preflight briefing

A conversation about your team, your goals, and where the drag is. No pitch, no deck. If it's not a fit, we'll tell you.

Step 2

Flight plan

A tailored engagement plan with clear outcomes, a cadence that fits your business, and a way to measure whether it's working.

Step 3

Fly, then debrief

Workshops, coaching, and honest debriefs, the way aviators do them. What went well, what didn't, and what we change next.

Get Started

Ready to find your team's L/D max?

Tell us about your organization and what you're navigating. Your note goes straight to Loree, who reads every one personally and will respond with an honest take on whether and how we can help.

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Less drag.More lift.