Nicole O'Neill Ash · ACC
N°01·About
· MORE ABOUT NICOLE
A lifetime of leadership.
A lifetime of asking different questions.
For more than three decades, I served in national security, leading people and organizations through complexity, uncertainty, and change. I coached senior executives, developed leaders, and helped teams navigate high-stakes decisions and transformation.
Throughout that career, one question stayed with me.
"
Why do some leaders seem to know, in their bones, exactly why they lead — while others, despite everything they have achieved, still aren't sure?
I didn't find the answer to that question in another leadership model. I found it through an unexpected teacher. That teacher was my genealogical research.
Genealogy wasn't my subject.
It was my teacher.
The path, in brief
At thirteen
Began researching my family history—believing I was simply learning names, dates, and stories.
For 30+ years
Led people and organizations in national security; coached and developed senior leaders.
Over time
Realized genealogy and leadership asked the same disciplines: seek context, trace patterns, understand people through history, and make room for grace.
Today
Those two lifetimes come together in Rooted Leader.
Rooted Leader grew from bringing those two lifetimes together. I help leaders examine the people, experiences, values, inherited beliefs, and stories that shaped them so they can understand themselves more truthfully, choose how they will lead, and build what they want to continue after them.
I began researching my family history as a teenager, believing I was simply learning about my ancestors. Over decades, I realized I was learning something much deeper.
Genealogy taught me to observe before judging. To seek context
before drawing conclusions. To understand that every person is shaped by relationships, history, purpose, and service — and to show my ancestors grace when contemplating their lived experiences, offering that same grace to myself and to others as we all seek to understand who we are, who we come from, and how we will carry those stories forward.
What I didn't realize until much later was that the same discipline genealogy demands — seeking context, tracing patterns, understanding people through their history — was exactly how I had been working and developing leaders all along. Without realizing it, I was developing a way of seeing people that would later become the foundation of my coaching.
N° 02
Where Rooted Leader Was Born
The Record
Founder, Rooted Leader LLC™
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Co-Founder, The Ashville Preservation Foundation
Nonprofit
Executive Coach
ICF Associate Certified Coach (ACC)
Retired Senior National Security Executive
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Board Advisor
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Speaker
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Genealogist
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Facilitator
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The titles below trace a career. What matters more is what that
career taught me about people — and what I now help other
leaders find in themselves.
Titles tell you what I've done.
Rooted Leader is about helping you discover who you are becoming.
N° 04
Beyond the Résumé
Legacy is not only something I teach. It is something I am building.
I co-founded the Ashville Preservation Foundation because honoring what came before us should lead to action. The Foundation works to preserve the cemetery, history, and legacy of a post-Emancipation African American community in Virginia. That work is a living expression of the same belief at the heart of Rooted Leader: what we inherit creates a responsibility for what we carry forward.