What did Nicola want to be when she grew up? Exactly this… and a ballerina.

As a Certified Life Coach and Founder of Executive Moms Coach, Nicola Ries Taggart is committed to assisting successful professional women in developing strategies, support and structures that allow them to be their best in business and in their personal lives. Nicola knows what it takes to be a leader and a business owner. She has high standards, understands hard work and knows how to develop a career to a point that feels good and garners respect. Nicola also understands that focusing on these steps in life can be exhausting and time-consuming.

While advancing her career within a national nonprofit organization, Nicola worked hard and worked often. She knows what it's like to be the first person in and the last person to leave the office. Nicola did this for more than six years and by the time she left the organization, she was burned out, having significant health issues and going through a divorce…all before the age of 30. Nicola can relate to the feeling that having a family and having a successful career seems near impossible. She often wondered how others like her -- high achieving women, with high standards -- were able to give 100 percent to work and 100 percent to family.

With this goal for herself in mind, and with the same dedication and hard work she had applied to previous responsibilities, Nicola started her own business, True Insights Coaching. Without children yet, Nicola dove right in to running her business with very few personal distractions or obligations pulling her in different directions…then she remarried and quickly became pregnant.

Nicola knew immediately she would need to shift her definition of success in order to “successfully” run a business and be the type of mom and partner in a marriage that she felt was right for her. Nicola will tell you, this was not easy; it required a lot of self-exploration, communication with her husband and trying new strategies to get to a point where her personal and professional goals were in harmony and feeding -- rather than conflicting -- with one another.

What Nicola has learned is that it is possible to have a life that is both professionally and personally rewarding and successful. Nicola believes you CAN have it all, but not if you try to do it all yourself or all at the same time.

Nicola knows how demanding it is to be a mother, especially of young children. It is an even more exhausting and time-consuming role then being an executive. Regardless of whether a woman is working at home or outside the home full-time, she is always a full-time mom. There are decisions to make, lunches to pack, noses to wipe, kids to get to bed, bodies to clean, dinners to make, homework to check, housework to do, etc, etc… It can feel like a never-ending list.

Nicola became a life leadership coach and speaker once she learned that coaching as a profession was something that she was already doing both personally and professionally. She is always the listening ear, the sounding board, the deep questioner, the strategist, the optimist, the cheerleader and the encourager.

Nicola offers a unique service to working moms because she has extensive experience and training in a variety of areas, from management to motherhood. From a parenting standpoint, she has many years of child care experience, including being a mother herself and serving as a nanny to three kids under the age of three while she was in college. Nicola constantly practices what she preaches as she strives to be the best mom she can be to her children - a young daughter, a pre-teen step-daughter and one on the way.

From a business and management standpoint, Nicola has real life experience in climbing the ladder to an executive level rather quickly and at a young age, as well as starting and running her own business. She has tackled many business roles -- strategic planning, human resources, organizational development, public speaking, marketing, public relations and budgeting -- and she has helped others successfully work through and implement these skills in their own leadership positions.

Nicola’s formal coaching training includes certification through the Coach Training Alliance and Dream Coach University. She is also trained in relationship coaching, for both singles and couples, through the Relationship Coaching Institute.

Learning to be the leader you want to be -- at work and at home -- requires contemplation, exploration and dedication. Being an executive mom is not a role for the weary. This is what Nicola knows and understands. As The Executive Moms Coach, she provides a collaborative partnership by supporting women and helping them navigate the path of discovering and realizing their professional and personal potential so they can have the best of all worlds!