Kelly Race spent the early part of her career as an Operations Manager inside a multi-location organization — watching leadership inconsistency compound across sites in real time.

She moved into Learning & Development, convinced that better training was the answer. For nearly two decades, she designed and delivered leadership development programs, earned a Certificate in Executive Leadership from Cornell University, and watched organizations invest significantly in developing their managers. The results were temporary. Behavior changed during the program. It drifted afterward. There was no system left behind to hold it.

The turning point came when she stopped asking “how do we develop better leaders?” and started asking “why doesn’t the behavior hold?” The answer was architecture — not training. Organizations were spending on programs without ever installing the governance infrastructure that makes leadership behavior consistent, measurable, and sustainable. 

After 18-years of watching organizations invest in training that wouldn’t hold, she stopped designing programs and started installing governance. Manager Performance  Architecture™ was built to close that gap – and Kelly’s new book, Manager Performance Architecture™: Why Leadership Training Fails and How Governance Fixes It, launches September 1, 2026.