What Makes Us Unique?

Tony Mulkern brings to strategic advising a unique set of experience and skills that make his services particularly valuable to clients.

Executive Experience. He served for many years as a senior officer at a rapidly growing, highly profitable mortgage banking company during a period of rapid growth.  More recently, a major money transfer company asked him to serve as an interim VP of HR, reporting to the CEO, to better assist in attracting, developing and retaining the top executive talent, which helped the firm grow from operating in 17 countries to 147. Tony has faced the tough decisions that all executives and senior management teams must face. He has had to make and win support for unpopular choices and has experienced first-hand the limits of management theory. As a former Managing Director of an investment banking company, he is intimately familiar with the factors, both quantitative and qualitative, that determine the market value of an enterprise.

Rigorous Background in Breakthrough Questions. Knowing how to ask a client the right questions, explore the implications of the various alternatives, and “drill down” to the core assumptions underlying a problem statement are all essential to effective coaching. Holding a doctorate in philosophy with an emphasis in decision theory, Tony is invariably seen as facilitating new insights and previously unconsidered perspectives and choices.  Additionally, he is a Certified Executive Coach, through the Center for Executive Coaching, and is certified in Stakeholder Centered Coaching from the Marshall Goldsmith Group.

Extensive Counseling Experience. Effective coaching requires establishment of a very high level of emotional trust, genuineness, and a capacity to show true empathy. As a member of the La Cañada Presbyterian Lay Counseling para-professional lay counseling team, Tony has undergone hundreds of hours of training with licensed clinical psychologists. As a volunteer counselor, Tony participates in weekly continuing education in leading edge counseling theory and practice.

First Hand Experience Working with Diversity. As a student who worked his way through college and graduate school, Tony held various jobs including construction laborer, grocery clerk and bagger, commercial milk truck driver, and hospital laboratory assistant, life insurance salesman and newspaper reporter. From these diverse jobs, came a highly developed capacity to relate well to those of diverse ethnic, cultural, educational, and occupational backgrounds, from entry level worker to CEO. Born in Northern Ireland and growing up in Texas, Tony also appreciates the challenges faced by immigrants. He is widely traveled throughout the U.S. as well as in Canada, Mexico, Latin America, Europe, and Asia.  He has advanced conversational, reading and writing skills in Spanish and lived for a year in Paris, France, where he held his own as a speaker of French.

For Mulkern Associates, strategic advising and leadership development are not a side-line, an avocation, or a part-time enterprise. As the firm undergoes growth parallel to that of most of our clients, Tony Mulkern experiences the same challenges to achieving life balance which are experienced by all successful and highly motivated professionals and executives.