Helping people rise
to what the moment
requires.
Jeff D. Harmon is a speaker, executive coach, leadership advisor and author. For more than 20 years, he has worked with leaders and organizations as they navigate growth, change, difficult decisions and the everyday challenges of leading people well.
But that wasn’t where Jeff started.
He graduated from the University of Central Florida with a degree in finance and spent the early part of his career in project management. He was good at figuring things out, solving problems and making things work.
Over time, he became much more interested in the people side of the work. Why could a smart group of people agree on what needed to happen and still struggle to do it? Why did some leaders bring out the best in people while others didn’t? Why did pressure seem to bring out very different versions of us?
Those questions eventually led Jeff into leadership development, executive coaching and organizational consulting. Since then, he has worked with thousands of leaders, from emerging leaders to senior executives, across industries including life sciences, technology and financial services.
His work has changed over the years, but one thing has stayed pretty consistent: helping people see what they may not be seeing, make more intentional choices and figure out how to move forward.
Life had some lessons of its own.
In 2006, Jeff was diagnosed with Adrenomyeloneuropathy (AMN), a rare progressive neurological disease. Over time, he lost his ability to walk and began using a wheelchair.
For the most part, Jeff responded the way he always had. He adapted. He figured things out. He kept working, coaching, raising a family and doing the things that mattered to him.
Then, in 2025, he decided to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. There was obviously no way he was going to do that alone. An extraordinary community came together to make the attempt possible, and Jeff ultimately reached Stella Point at 18,885 feet in his wheelchair.
The experience tested a lot of what he had spent years believing and teaching about leadership, resilience and community.
“If you’ve ever had someone coach, teach, or lead you that commanded the room, then you know what I’m talking about. Not in an authoritative way, but a way and sense that you can’t help but follow.”
“I didn’t feel like I was leading a climb. I was cargo.” That sentence stuck with him. Jeff had spent a lot of his life learning how to be strong, contribute, help, lead and make himself useful. Kilimanjaro put him in situations where he couldn’t always do those things. Sometimes his job was to trust other people, receive what they had to give and let himself be carried.
He came home thinking differently about some things. Not because the mountain suddenly made him an expert on leadership or resilience, but because it gave him a very different place from which to examine it.
Today
Jeff brings all of those experiences into his work today.
As a speaker, he uses story and practical ideas to challenge audiences to think differently about leadership, resilience, success and how they respond when circumstances change.
As an executive coach and leadership advisor, he works with leaders and teams who want to lead more intentionally, work better together and turn what they say matters into how they actually operate.
As an author, he writes about leadership, resilience, possibility and the choices that shape who we become and how we affect the people around us.
Jeff is also the founder of My Impossible, a nonprofit that creates opportunities for people living with disabilities to pursue things that may have once felt impossible, with a community beside them.
His forthcoming memoir, Cargo: Learning to Be Carried in a Life Built on Strength, tells the story of Kilimanjaro and what Jeff discovered about strength, usefulness, leadership and being carried along the way.
Through all of it, Jeff keeps coming back to a simple question.