A coach and a leader in a one-on-one session

Coaching

Coaches are the core of our mission.

They organize the community and sit with members one-on-one. We are always looking for leaders to serve those who serve others.

Meet the coaches

The people who keep the room honest.

They organize the community and sit with members one-on-one. Choose a face to read the story — or scroll the line.

Brad Hays

The long view — faith, work, and a leader who does not have to walk it alone.

Brad Hays is president of The Leadership Exchange and a coach who spent four decades in business before giving that experience away. He sits with leaders from the chief’s office to the front line, through the lenses of faith, life, and work. His purpose is plain: apply God’s transforming word in the workplace.

The acumen was formed at Pennzoil Products Company and AlliedSignal, in a strategic consulting firm, and in three privately funded start-ups. That path led him to found Leaven Exchange, a practice in leadership development and executive coaching, and later to chair and serve the Exchange. He has also served The Gathering of Men Houston, Convene as Houston area chair, the Center for Christianity in Business at Houston Baptist University, and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southeast Texas.

A fourth-generation Texan, Brad lives the rest of the week with his wife, Eileen, their family — including fourteen grandchildren — and Houston’s Second Baptist Church, where he sings and teaches. At the Exchange he keeps the room rooted: passion to start the work, diligence to keep it.

Coach

John Sloan

Start-ups, turnarounds, and the people inside the company.

John Sloan coaches nonprofit directors with the instincts of someone who has started companies, turned them around, and sat in every chair. He has more than twenty-five years in management — as president, executive vice president, chief financial officer, and head of business development — and he still cares most about helping people and organizations grow.

Raised in Dallas, he earned a B.A. in economics from the University of Dallas and an M.B.A. from SMU’s Cox School of Business, then moved to Houston and the energy industry in 1990. He led sales for petrochemical service firms, founded Fishbone Solutions in 1999, grew it for twelve years, and stayed through a sale to stand up finance and business development. In 2015 he formed Sloan Rangers, a consulting and coaching practice: help people and companies grow.

He chairs peer rooms at Leaven Exchange and at TLE the same way — as a peer among leaders, not a lecturer. Bring him a live problem. He has held the weight of a start-up, a turnaround, and a Tuesday that would not wait.

Coach

Bobby Hillin

Operations, capital, and the discipline of a finish line.

Bobby Hillin brings more than twenty-five years of energy, finance, and operations into the coaching room. He has founded companies, sold them well, and raised capital for work that had to hold in the field — the kind of operating pressure executive directors recognize even when the industry is different.

He was chief executive of Texas ReExcavation, a vacuum excavation company he led to a sale in 2012, and of T-REX Engineering & Construction, an EPC firm that built subsea tieback equipment and shallow-water platforms. He later served as CEO and majority shareholder of TRCW, a manufacturer of pressure-control and wellhead equipment, until its sale in 2019, and as a partner in an independent oil-and-gas company responsible for raising capital for leases, production, and drilling.

Bobby’s first vocation was racing. He drove professionally, won the Talladega 500, and launched two race teams. That discipline — preparation, a crew, a finish line — still shapes how he sits with a leader who has a hard week and a decision that cannot wait.

Coach

Samuel Puente

Culture, transition, and a leader who stays true to the calling.

Samuel Puente is an executive coach, ordained minister, and marketplace leader who has spent more than twenty years walking with people and organizations toward growth and clarity. He holds an ACC credential from the International Coaching Federation and an AGCC3 credential from the AG Coaching Coalition, and he works across ministries, nonprofits, and businesses.

His practice is culture, transition, and the quiet work of staying grounded when the mission is heavy. He likes to say every leader needs a coach. He understands the particular pressure of ministry and mission-driven shops, and he stays with a client until the next step is clear — and still true to their values and their faith.

When he is not coaching, Sam is with his family, on a trail, at a microphone, or with a guitar and a good cup of coffee. At the Exchange he brings that same unhurried attention to the one-on-one and to the group. Members get a pastor’s ear, an operator’s questions, and a coach who will not hurry the hard part.

Coach

Bill Bispeck

The system under the symptom — and the next right move.

Bill Bispeck coaches leaders to think one level higher, so they can be the best they can be in the calling they already have. Before The Leadership Exchange, he spent more than a decade in executive coaching and leadership development with chief executives, vice presidents, plant managers, and the people who report to them.

That work sits on three decades in industry. He was a plant manager for General Electric, Huntsman Corporation, and NOVA Chemicals, including multi-site responsibility and the hard middle of mergers. His assignments ran through operations, environmental health and safety, engineering, and corporate staff, in plastics, specialty chemicals, and petrochemicals. Later he served as vice president at InCite Logix and as chief operating officer of inCite Legal Tech.

Bill’s gift is making a complex shop legible. He helps a leader see the system, not only the symptom, and then choose the next right move. In the Exchange he is the coach who will stay with the operating question until it can be practiced on a Tuesday, not only described in a meeting.

Eligibility as a coach

1.Must be of good moral character.
2.Have a demonstrable level of expertise in management.
3.Experience in nonprofit or business leadership.
4.Should have talents that apply to education.

Offer to serve

Tell us about your leadership experience. We read every note.