We built Rise & Thrive Global for leaders who know something is broken.
Not broken in their organisations. Broken in how leadership development pretends to work.
You have sat through programs that promised transformation. You learned frameworks that made sense in the moment. And then you got back to your desk and reverted to exactly what you always do.
That is not your failure. That is a design flaw in how we approach change.
The Realisation That Changed Everything
Catherine Plano spent years watching something that did not make sense.
Intelligent leaders. Values-driven. Kind. People who genuinely wanted to lead differently.
And then pressure hit. A missed deadline. A difficult conversation. A decision with real stakes.
And they became reactive. Defensive. Controlling. They abandoned everything they said they believed in.
Catherine recognised that pattern because she had lived it. She knew what it felt like to override your own intuition to survive expectations and approval. To know what you should do and do the opposite anyway.
That was the moment she realised leadership is not a skills problem. It is a nervous system and identity problem.
Traditional programs teach what to do differently. But they never touch what happens in the 400 milliseconds before conscious thought, when your amygdala scans for threat and your nervous system chooses the response.
By the time you think, "What should I do here?" your operating system has already decided.
What We Believe That Others Do Not
People already know what to do. They just do not feel safe enough to do it.
Most leadership development assumes people need more capability. We believe they need more internal permission.
The question is not "What technique should I use?" The question is "What am I afraid will happen if I lead the way I know I should?"
That fear lives in your nervous system. In unconscious patterns formed by childhood, trauma, corporate conditioning, and decades of survival adaptation.
You cannot workshop your way out of that. You have to rewire the operating system itself.
This is our flagship work. A 12-month continuous learning framework that transforms how leaders' brains respond to pressure.
We partner with Fortune 500 organisations across technology, healthcare, financial services, professional services, and manufacturing. Organisations that have invested millions in training that changed nothing.
The transformation happens through seven integrated mechanisms that rewire unconscious patterns: Awareness, Meaning, Precision, Experience, Repetition, Relationship, and Availability.
The result? Leaders who make different decisions under pressure. Teams that move at a competitive speed. Organisations that stop losing millions to reversion.
This program was born from watching strength defined too narrowly.
The feminine is not gender. It is presence, intuition, receptivity, and relational intelligence. Catherine created this program because she watched leaders burn out trying to lead without these capacities.
It matters because reclaiming the feminine saved her from herself.
We train the next generation of coaches through our ICF Level 2 Accredited Positive Psychology Coaching Program.
Rise & Thrive Global is one of only two organisations in the world to hold this accreditation.
Because this work cannot scale through one person. If we want systemic change, we need practitioners who understand depth, ethics, and responsibility.
Training coaches is how this work lives beyond Catherine.
Our Purpose, Vision & Mission
Our Purpose: We develop the leaders who transform the world — combining neuroscience and evidence-based methods to drive breakthroughs in self-awareness and conscious leadership.
Our Vision: A world where purpose-driven leaders harness cutting-edge brain science to transform themselves, their organisations, and the communities they serve.
Our Mission: We work with leaders and organisations ready to break free from the unconscious patterns limiting their potential. Using neuroscience, behavioural science, and evidence-based coaching, we create measurable breakthroughs in performance, innovation, and wellbeing — transforming leaders from the inside out so they can transform everything around them.
Our Values
Collaboration - We are partners in your expansion and success...
We co-create, co-design and collaborate tailored impactful initiatives to ensure the results meet your ever-changing needs.
Connection - We enable you to lead change and transformation...
We help you build an inspired, engaged and committed workforce that fosters a culture of trust with purpose-driven behaviours.
Courage - We empower you to navigate the unknown...
We challenge stakeholders with visions of the future that are outside of what they consider ‘probable’ to inspire them to pursue new opportunities.
Creativity - We are big on innovation and design thinking...
We inspire your people to be innovators and design thinkers, ready to tackle complex future challenges while generating creative ideas that will transform your culture.
Respect - We honour each other's values, differences and contributions...
We practice and encourage open and honest communication building loyalty through responsible actions, honesty and integrity in a timely manner.
Visionary - We thrive on big-picture forward-thinking....
We view people, services, products and organisations as part of a constantly changing system. We consider the whole system and how they influence one another as a whole.
Catherine holds a PhD in Philosophy because she needed to understand the fundamental questions beneath behaviour change: What makes someone choose differently under pressure? How does identity shape action? Why do intelligent people sabotage themselves?
She earned the Master Certified Coach credential — held by fewer than 4% of coaches globally — to ensure the depth this work requires. She has delivered TED talks on positive psychology and leadership and partners with the University of Melbourne and Grand Canyon University on research and program development.
With more than 30 years of experience across diverse work environments, Catherine has designed and led strategic, high-impact learning, organisational development, performance improvement, and change management initiatives for some of the world's biggest brands.
But those credentials exist to serve something deeper.
What breaks Catherine's heart is the superficiality.
The endless frameworks that never touch the inner architecture of a human being. Organisations are trying with good intent, spending money, yet nothing changes because no one slows down enough to work at the level of fear, safety, and self-trust.
She sees leaders blamed for not changing when the system never taught them how.
Catherine is a champion of emerging leaders and an advocate for workplace equality. She empowers executives to progress to the next level in their careers with a focus on personal leadership development. She is particularly passionate about providing women with leadership and coaching programs to build self-confidence, self-awareness, and techniques to overcome workplace pressures.
Catherine has been recognised as:
- Top 10 Leadership Development Training and Coaching Companies in APAC 2019 (CIO Advisor)
- Most Empowering Leadership Coach (APAC Insider 2023)
- Customer Choice Excellence (Australian Enterprise Award 2023)
- Top 20 Mindful Thought Leaders (Business Insiders)
But what drives her is not recognition. The belief is that when you change how you relate to yourself under pressure, everything else follows.
What We Stand For
We will never sell a transformation we cannot stand behind.
We have turned down profitable work when the intent was optics rather than real change. We will not promise speed at the expense of depth. We will not manipulate fear or urgency to drive sales.
And we will never reduce human beings to metrics without honouring their inner world.
The best client partnerships feel spacious, honest, and alive. Like co-creation. The ones that drain us feel like we are carrying what someone else is unwilling to face.
We choose the first kind. Even when it means saying no.
What We Want For You
After working with Rise & Thrive Global, we want you to feel grounded. Clear. Self-trusting. Less afraid of yourself. More at home in your leadership.
We want leaders who can stay present when it matters most. Organisations where humanity is not a liability but a strength. Cultures where truth is safer than performance.
Because when you change how you relate to yourself under pressure, everything else follows.
If Rise & Thrive Global Did Not Exist
There would be a gap. Between science and soul. Between leadership theory and lived embodiment. Between performance and humanity.
Organisations would keep investing in programs that teach frameworks while ignoring the nervous system underneath. Leaders would keep learning what to do differently while continuing to revert when pressure hits.
We exist to bridge that gap.
Not through more models or techniques. Through work that touches the inner architecture where real transformation happens.
What breaks Catherine's heart is the superficiality.
Ready to Take the Next Step?
If you are tired of superficial change, we should talk.Not because we have the perfect program. Because we understand that leadership transformation requires working at a depth most organisations are unwilling to go.
Start with a free Culture Diagnostic. We will quantify what operating system failures are costing you. And we will tell you honestly whether we are the right partner for the change you actually need.
Most leaders discover they have been measuring the wrong things. And that the gap between the current state and the transformed state is bigger than they thought.
The question is whether you are ready to do the work that actually creates lasting change.