Joanna Mercado

Joanna is an experienced and passionate leader, speaker, coach, and transformational trainer. Not to mention a Bestselling author of two books in 7 countries.

She enjoys helping others to discover the best version of themselves by facilitating workshops, speaking about leadership, and personal coaching.

Her focus is on teams efficiency and the freedom of individual performance. Through her process she is able to deliver results in organizations that include creating clear accountability, motivation, and respect of teams and co-workers. All of this makes your organization more effective and productive.

Joanna led the cultural and performance transformation (Operational Excellence) of the Great Lakes region in PepsiCo. She led, taught, coached, and mentored over 1,600 employees in 8 facilities, through the process of implementing a lean and bottom-up method to lead and run the business on a daily basis. As a result of her leadership, the facilities reached combined savings of 8M dollars, increased productivity by 15% on average, developed and promoted leaders within, and improved their Organizational Health scores. The plant’s leadership teams were able to improve their progress and Key Performance Indicators (KPI) results by 146% by implementing a sustainable operational system. She supported the leadership of the region to develop and inspire hourly associates to step up and take leadership roles, gaining an engaged and driven workforce even in the facilities with a union environment.

10 years with Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company took her around the world and her work implementing safety, quality productivity and cost performance structures are still in use at facilities and plants from China to South America.

Joanna has been a motivational and transformational speaker for 6 years, finding creative ways to engage and support the much needed change in all levels of business organization. Working on 4 continents and in 15 countries allowed her to gain a rich perspective of different cultures and the impact of those on effective leadership skills. Her observations about the modern corporate crisis and the need to focus on leadership development is what moved her to start sharing her own journey and tips on how to become an extraordinary leader.

Joanna has spoken in multiple universities both in the US and internationally and is frequently a podcast guest sharing her knowledge and experience. In 2019 Joanna coached and supported teams in Croatia and Norway as part of their Business Freedom Speaking Academy training, helping one hundred people to improve their communication skills in five days.