Joan is a super star! Her energy and enthusiasm translate to big results. Joan leverages insights into empowerment, work/life balance, and communications to inform leadership/organizational development and personal branding. Her coaching services navigate career and life changes with flexibility and nuance. Joan does not offer a one-size-fits-all solution to her clients—she puts in the work to find the right fit for each client and the right tools for each organization.

I’ve known and worked with Joan for Twelve years spanning three different areas. She is truly a national account sales and consulting guru. She gave me my start and took a chance on someone that had no experience in chain accounts and coached me into an account closer. Joan is a wonderful coach and mentor of people; she truly has the magic touch that brings out your absolute best. She will push limits and put a person at ease all at the same time.

Working with Joan is a gift. With her immense knowledge of the food service industry her sales and selling strategies are on point. 

Me and my possibilities. Joan and I met… during a time in my career when I felt helpless and frustrated. A time when I thought nobody would understand my specific work dynamics and challenges. I, like so many of you, thought that "work" was just another four-letter word that you deal with by unloading your stress on our loved ones until the next workday to repeat the vicious cycle.

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Even after initially meeting Joan, taking the Birkman Assessment, and discussing my coaching goals, I was skeptical. Well, more like resistant. But, at a minimum, having a third party to discuss my work challenges was significantly more helpful than struggling alone.

In less than a year, through my experience with Joan, I went from a person to a professional. I used to take everything on, internalize, stress, and quite frankly be combative in my working environment, to harnessing a much more stabilized professional self. I started with doubts about my existing employer and role—to now undergoing a promotion.

Joan quelled any uncertainty about her desire and intuition to understand my individual work experiences. I look forward to our regularly scheduled meeting times and in-between calls, I carry a self-made expression with me, "What would Joan say?"​

"Joan's ability to get to the essence of your opportunities and challenges is her greatest strength as a coach. By using carefully chosen tools and dialogue, she guided me down the path to a new career choice that meets all of my "must haves". Her upbeat style and encouragement made the sessions very enjoyable and I looked forward to them every two weeks. I have worked with coaches in the past but none have helped me get the results Joan has and I highly recommend her."

"The last six months have changed my life. Prior to receiving coaching, I continued to make the same mistakes and kept receiving the same result. I couldn’t understand why. Once I started receiving career coaching the world spun around for me. I started to see my errors and began making changes. My major issues were lack of confidence and executive presence. My coach never judged me, or made me feel like I was inadequate. She brought the confidence out in me that was buried down low. She made me see that other women felt as I did, I was not alone. She coached me on how to handle the many struggles of balancing a career while being a woman and a mother. She helped me to understand that I should never apologize for being over ambitious, but instead to harness that energy positively to ensure it comes off the right way. I whole heartedly feel that every woman should have a coach like Joan to help empower and enable their future success.”

 “Joan Axelrod Siegelwax is one of the most passionate people I know when it comes to helping develop and guide women in the foodservice industry. I am lucky to have her as my mentor, coach and more importantly call her my friend. While Joan has been coaching me for two plus years, we always laugh that she really has been my mentor from the first day we met five years ago at WFF and two years ago we just decided to make it “official”. That’s because from the first day I met Joan she quickly became someone I admired, respected, and would seek out for advice. She has helped me grow as a person and helped coach me especially now in my new role of Manager. As a mentor, coach and friend Joan takes such a personal interest in helping me succeed which I believe is the unique quality that makes her so great.” 

I first met Joan at the 2012 Women’s Foodservice Forum Regional Connect at Hyde Park. We sat across from each other and by the end of the evening I had a new friend, mentor and eventually coach. Joan didn’t have to take interest in me or my career, but she knew I had a desire to improve my business and professional presence. She is a coach through-and-through. Joan has been mentoring and guiding business professionals for years prior to her official title of Executive Coach. 

One of Joan’s many qualities is her ability to make people feel totally comfortable in their skin. She does an amazing job of not passing judgment and instead asking very insightful and sometimes difficult questions to answer. As a woman, early in my career I never realized how much benefit I would receive by having a coach like Joan. She has been able to help me identify patterns in my professional life that were holding me back, and offered strategies on how to improve. Sometimes the greatest breakthrough during our sessions is simply recognizing that problems exist. These issues vary from twirling my hair when I’m nervous, and not realizing to how this action is perceived by co-workers or deeper issues such as lack of confidence that I have been subconsciously dealing with for years. The best part of being Joan’s mentee, client and friend is that after we have a coaching breakthrough the conversations shifts effortlessly to family or fun planned for the weekend. 

Joan doesn’t psychoanalyze my judgment or tell me how to manage my professional career, she’s REAL with me. We talk, listen, and work on ways to improve. Joan has helped me grow both professionally and personally into a more confident and self-aware individual. Thank you! 

I was thrilled to learn Joan received her certification to “officially” become an Executive Coach! This is the role she was born for. We worked together for five years and every time we encountered a crossroad Joan was right there, digging in, and rebuilding our foundation so we could re-group and move forward. Whether it was with one employee who needed to restructure their approach to meet an objective, or the joining of two disparate departments who needed to learn how to work together, Joan instinctively knew how to break the challenge down and put processes in place to solve it. Ultimately, she was always there in the weeks to follow, encouraging, tweaking and holding her team accountable to the processes they had agreed to. 

I am fortunate to have met Joan three years ago. Since then, Joan has taken on the role of coach and mentor to me. Through my uncertainty about my past job and position, to my recent new job search, Joan has provided me guidance and support. While conducting my new job search, I again turned to Joan for advice regarding the company and role I was considering, the interview process and protocol for turning in my resignation. I have always been in awe of Joan’s wealth of knowledge along with her kindness and generosity. I look forward to my newest endeavor and know that I will have Joan in my corner providing me support and a listening ear whenever needed. I consider myself fortunate to have Joan as a coach, role model and friend. 

Joan has been my informal Life Coach for more than a year, so I was thrilled to learn of her accreditation and formal practice! One of the best 'directions' she has given me is to make time for myself, a professed workaholic. Joan stressed, many times, that balance in one's life was necessary for a healthier existence, both professionally and personally. She never nagged or pushed - she gently recommended, which I appreciated. The outcome is that I am taking more time off...and enjoying it. A side benefit-I am more productive at work. Thanks, Joan!