Khalia Stokes is a certified executive leadership coach, speaker, and the founder of Khalia Stokes Consulting, where she teaches the human work of leadership. Through the Holdwell Leadership Cycle, a framework she created, she helps emerging leaders and middle managers hold well: their people and themselves. Holding well means leading with clarity, care, and accountability. Her signature belief is simple: care isn't soft.

Khalia knows the middle firsthand. Alongside her practice, she serves as a senior manager of financial programs in corporate finance, where she leads a team that oversees thousands of financial programs representing more than $1 billion in revenue. That daily experience shapes how she coaches, facilitates, and speaks. She works with individual leaders, leadership cohorts, and organizations through coaching, team development, and keynotes. She has completed hundreds of  coaching sessions in Philadelphia-area workforce development programs and also coaches executives. She also was a speaker at Disrupt HR Philly discussing the growing gap between rising expectations for results and falling standards for caring leadership. 

Khalia holds a Bachelor of Science in Business, with a concentration in Accounting and Finance, from Eastern University. She is a Certified Executive Coach, Certified Career Coach, Certified Business Coach, and Certified Life and Transformational Solution-Focused Coach.

College students hold a special place in Khalia's work. She founded Dreams to Founder Inc., a nonprofit that gives college students and others equal access to coaching and professional development they might not otherwise be able to afford. She was the keynote speaker for Delaware Valley University's first Women's Summit and led Dreams to Founder's first conference at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Cheers to the Fall and the Purpose of It All, and she has been featured in Real Simple, on FOX 29 and iHeartRadio, and at the LA Times Festival of Books.

Khalia lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, Rich, and their two boys, Karter and Jaxon. When she isn't working, you'll find her on the baseball field with her boys or traveling with her family.