Lynda McNutt- Foster
Founder, CEO
Cortex Leadership Consulting

Lynda McNutt Foster has been an innovator in business since 1987 when she opened her first company at only 20 years old.  

Designing new processes that became industry standards in pest control, advertising, and now the coaching industry, Lynda is a sought after executive coach, strategist, and keynote speaker.

Lynda is the CEO and founder of Cortex Leadership Consulting and was named a Business Icon by Valley Business Front magazine.  Lynda’s work has been published on forbes.com and an expert executive coach commentator on WFXR news in Southwest Virginia.  She is the founder of www.goMonti.com, an innovative coaching enhancement tool designed to increase retention and implementation of leadership practices.

Lynda is a Conversational Intelligence® certified coach and trainer.

Lynda has conducted more than 3,000 executive coaching sessions and trained more than 10,000 professionals in the areas of communication, change management, time mastery, conversational intelligence, leadership coaching, facilitation, and executive presence.  She has used the research she has gathered and analyzed from those sessions, trainings, and goMonti, to advise international coaching firms like Axialent, a firm Cortex partners with who work with clients like Amazon, Google, Proctor & Gamble, and Facebook.

Lynda is the author of two ebooks. Time Mastery: 7 Simple Steps to Richer Outcomesand 4 Keys to More Effective Leadership Behaviors. 

Lynda is the mother of a daughter much smarter than she is, a husband much kinder, and she is the CEO of Cortex Leadership.  She is a brain-focused trainer. Practical author. Slow runner. Day hiker. Enthusiastic zipliner. Pathetic speller and bowler.

Richard Hammer
Senior IT Consultant/ Data Analyst/ Enterprise Architect
Cortex Leadership Consulting
Associate Vice President, Cloud Factory
1901 Group

In his current position with 1901 Group, Richard leads a 45 person team of experienced SMEs and researches and defines industry best practices and people, process and tools approach to implement an assembly line approach to software development and migration.

Richard has over 30 years of experience in consulting, data analytics, and management of technology teams. From directing $400K to $3M initiatives, to managing over $20M in VC/equity funding, Richard understands how to achieve success and what to do when you have it. One of his greatest successes was the transition he made from advertising and marketing to a new project resulted in moving the needle on children’s’ education throughout our country. Richard’s work building Interactive Achievement allowed him to make a powerful impact and one he expects will continue with the PowerSchool organization, who recently acquired Interactive Achievement. 

With experience as an enterprise architect with organizations like NASA, AOL, Discovery Channel, and Freddie Mac, and 1901 Group Richard has led teams that consistently delivered the right innovation at the right time.

Richard has a talent of transforming low performing IT teams with his ability to synergize the worlds of technology, business, and people. 

Richard is an expert in SQL and other business analytic tools that allow him to find holes in data that others can’t and presents them to clients in a language they can understand. Combining this with his “big picture” understanding of success, it is not surprising that Richard is highly regarded as a community technology leader.