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Kelly Vaughn

Kelly Vaughn

2.3K Subscribers

Sr. Engineering Manager @ Zapier | Trained Therapist

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Kelly Vaughn will help you lead with clarity and confidence

Kelly combines over a decade of leadership experience with a formal therapy background to help managers handle difficult conversations with clarity and confidence. Her approach focuses on balancing directness with empathy, guiding leaders to address issues without damaging trust.

She has coached individual contributors and managers through real-world challenges like underperformance, misalignment, and giving direct feedback, helping them say what needs to be said and handle whatever comes next.

Kelly is currently a Sr. Engineering Manager at Zapier. Outside of her day job, she speaks on leadership at tech conferences and writes about practical leadership at The Modern Leader.

Alumni reviews

Kelly provides a lot of insight into common challenges that an engineering leader faces. I found the content extremely helpful for my day-to-day interactions with others.
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Matt

Cohort 7
Senior II Frontend Engineer · Arkestro
Enjoyed this course a lot! I appreciated the opportunity to connect with other engineering managers. Kelly was very engaging as a facilitator and clearly very knowledgeable. If you've taken other engineering management trainings before, there may be some overlap with this course's content. I'd been hoping there would be more focus on the "AI era" content, but Kelly mentioned she was overhauling the curriculum, so it's possible this would be present in future cohorts.
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Jennifer

Cohort 7
Senior Software Engineering Manager · Alarm.com
I found this course very engaging. I really appreciated the small cohort size, as it gave everyone the chance to participate and engage. I also appreciated the format, with content followed by discussion questions, which encouraged meaningful discussions. The examples provided were clear and relevant, and I especially valued Kelly's experience-based insights. My only suggestion would be to extend the course length. With just four on-hour live sessions held every other day, the timeframe felt a bit limited for covering material in depth. A slightly longer schedule would allow for more comprehensive learning experience. Basically, I wish we had more time with the course because it was that great!

Mai

Cohort 6
Software engineer · CallRail
Kelly is a wonderfully engaging and insightful leader. I came away with more perspective and grounding that I can use in my day to day as a manager.
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Ben

Cohort 6
Engineering Manager · Zapier
Really enjoyed the course! Lots of useful, ready-to-use tips, and the discussions with other participants made it even better.

Ana

Cohort 6
PM / COO · Monadical