Kate Wood
Intuitive Executive Coach
Founder of Illuminate Coaching and
Co-Founder of The Table
Kate Wood is an influential community leader and accomplished executive with a proven track record in strategic planning, fostering collaboration, and optimizing operations. With a career spanning over three decades, Kate has consistently demonstrated her ability to turn visions into reality through effective leadership and innovative thinking.
Kate founded Illuminate Coaching, LLC, where she collaborates with clients to launch new companies, create strategic plans, develop executives, and provide leadership coaching with intuitive insight. This includes bringing her decades of business experience along with utilizing the ability to perceive and understand situations beyond the obvious using a blend or instinct and emotional intelligence. She has developed, authored, and launched an online course, along with accompanying books, further solidifying her reputation as a catalyst for business transformation and personal growth.
Along with Illuminate Coaching, Kate is the Co-Founder of The Table, LLC, with the mission of making Nashville the model city for equity and inclusiveness by taking action to create opportunities to grow prosperity for people of color. The bipartisan organization has grown to 315 members and secured 16 company sponsors. Through her leadership, The Table has achieved significant and ongoing results.
Prior to her entrepreneurial ventures, Kate spent over two decades at American City Business Journals, where she held various leadership roles, including Market President and Publisher of the Nashville Business Journal. Her tenure was marked by significant achievements, such as increasing revenue, growing print and digital subscriptions, and leading the development of innovative products and revenue programs that were adopted nationwide. Her leadership extended beyond business metrics; she was instrumental in transforming team efficiency, implementing successful team development initiatives, and fostering a collaborative and motivated work environment. Her efforts in gathering community feedback, facilitating focus groups, and implementing process improvements have had a lasting impact on both local and national levels.
During this time, Kate also served as a national trainer and facilitator in Professional Selling Skills (PSS) for advertising sales teams and in Kenexa Workplace Audit, where she administered strategic improvement plans to enhance workplace engagement. She presented to over 300 groups on networking and authored the book “Business Networking Secrets: Stand Out from The Crowd and Be Unforgettable”.
Kate’s commitment to community collaboration is evident through her active participation in numerous civic and board roles. She has served on the boards of the YWCA, Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, United Way, and many other organizations, consistently driving initiatives that benefit the broader community.
Outside her professional life, Kate enjoys running, tennis, gardening and painting, which helps her stay balanced and inspired. She and her husband have five children.