# Cassie Adkins

Founder, Executive Coaching Solutions LLC | Leadership Coach & Addiction Specialist

Canonical: https://mornings.network/shows/center-stage/guests/cassie-adkins

## Biography

Cassie Adkins grew up on the side of a mountain in Virginia with three brothers — a childhood that, by her own telling, explains everything that came after. She is direct, unpolished when it serves the work, and deeply comfortable in discomfort. Today, those qualities are the backbone of her practice as a leadership coach, business consultant, and nationally certified addiction and substance abuse counselor serving executives navigating some of the most chaotic organizational moments of their professional lives.

Cassie's path to where she now sits is not the straight line of an MBA and corporate ladder. It began with architecture — she trained as an architecture student before pivoting to addiction therapy, a field she has described as requiring the same precision and structural thinking as design, but applied to human systems rather than buildings. She spent more than a decade as a working addiction therapist, building fourteen years of lived experience alongside her clinical training, before that expertise began to intersect with the leadership and organizational challenges of the business world.

Her firm, Executive Coaching Solutions LLC, was launched quietly in December 2023 as a side venture, then went full-time in January 2024 after Cassie was laid off and made the decision to go all in. The practice is built on a deceptively simple premise: business success starts and ends with the people behind it. As a leadership coach and consultant, Cassie works with executives navigating high-stakes transitions — mergers, acquisitions, major organizational shifts — helping them turn complexity into clarity. Her methodology combines coaching, conflict resolution, and process optimization into strategies tailored to the specific human dynamics of each engagement.

What makes Cassie singular is the combination of clinical depth and business fluency she brings to the room. Most leadership coaches approach the executive as a professional. Cassie approaches the executive as a human being with a psychological history — because she has spent years with clients in the most vulnerable moments of their lives, she knows what it actually looks like when people change, what makes change stick, and what organizational conditions make it more or less likely. That knowledge, applied to CEOs merging billion-dollar teams, produces a qualitatively different kind of intervention.

She is also a certified addiction and substance abuse counselor through Rise in Recovery, the practice she founded in December 2024, making her resources accessible to individuals and families across the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and remotely throughout the United States. In addition, she serves as an Implementation Consultant at Trainual and as a board member at Invicta International, where she brings her blend of strategic insight and human-centered leadership to support trauma-impacted communities.

Cassie Adkins hosts her own podcast, "You're Not Actually A Leader Yet," where she challenges conventional leadership thinking with the same candor she brings to every coaching engagement.

She joined Mornings in the Lab's Center Stage from 12 acres on a dead-end road in the middle of Virginia — a detail that, like everything about her, says exactly what she means about the kind of life and leadership she is building.

## Links



## Transcript

let's bring up our guest here let's bring in the gang here and listen we got somebody coming up here right now Cassie Atkins we're going to get into a CEO coach reveals how to transform team chaos in excellence when Tech entrepreneurs and CEOs are merging billion dooll teams they don't call Ghostbusters oh bad joke no they call her yeah yeah today she's sharing the exact blueprint she uses to transform leadership chaos into organizational excellence and it all starts in the first minutes first 90 minutes of your day Cassie Atkins welcome to Mornings in the live with Keith and Friends good morning good morning morning cath how are you I am a ball of anxiety how are you oh good so what brings the ball of anxiety today you have three brothers you're hanging out with three brothers this morning how are you I know that was not lost on me believe you me so where are you joining us from today Cassie where where you coming from today I am in Virginia on 12 acres on a dead end Road in the middle of nowhere just how I like it oh sounds amazing that does sound amazing yeah long driveway kind of thing middle of nowhere yeah is that where it's at yeah I grew up with three brothers on the side of a mountain so that that should tell everyone everything they need to know and the Plaid that's probably a giveaway giving it all away there you go there you go so Cassie we have a question we' like to ask every single guest here on the show it's pretty important question and uh you ready for it no go for it all right what is Cass morning routine not the polished version not the one you want the audience to hear what's the real one