Dr. Gena Cox

Dr. Gena Cox is an organizational psychologist who advises CEOs and boards on the leadership behaviors that separate organizations that perform under pressure from those that fracture under it. Her central message - drawn from twenty-five years of practice and the evidence base of I-O psychology - is that respect is the often-overlooked, measurable, teachable foundation of leadership effectiveness, and the single most underused performance lever in the modern enterprise.

She is the creator of the R-E-S-P-E-C-T Ethos™, a research-grounded behavioral framework that delivers two outcomes leaders need to build the organizations they envision: that every employee feels Seen, Heard, and Valued, and that trust between leaders and their people is a durable asset rather than a fragile one. Before founding her advisory firm Feels Human, LLC, Gena held senior roles inside major corporations - an insider's vantage point that shapes how she works with the executives she now advises. She has coached more than 175 senior leaders, many of whom have advanced into C-suite and board roles.

Gena is the author of the multi-award-winning book Leading Inclusion (2022), recipient of the Foreword Indies Gold Award and a Library Journal Starred Review. She was named a Thinkers50 Global Top 50 Coach in 2024. Her writing and perspective appear in business media including Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Fast Company, and she is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). She earned her PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from the University of South Florida.