Adele Burnes

“Adele is undoubtedly one of the most important mentors and leaders I have had in my professional life. I was lucky to have her as my manager for almost 4 years at YouNoodle. Adele is someone I deeply admire and respect, I would constantly look up to her for guidance, and I would always pay close attention to her extremely helpful advice. I’m sure many of my colleagues would agree and many of our main clients respected her and esteemed her very much as well. Very few people have given me the valuable feedback she gave me that has helped me learn, grow and understand myself better. She’s a great example of effective assertive leadership. I always admired how she was able to stand up for her ideas and get her point across but never at the expense of others, always empathizing and giving a voice and value to everyone’s input. At the end, many important decisions would emerge from well-backed collaborative efforts thanks to her leadership. She always expects high quality work from you but empowers you to be autonomous and provides great support. She’s a great listener, she would check in with you with thoughtful questions and also ask for feedback herself. She cares about the person as a whole. She’s also an exceptional operations and project manager. When I started at YN, she managed most of our enterprise-level client projects and did so very competently and thoroughly. She designed effectively most of the processes, best practices and key aspects (strategy, implementation plan, reporting/analytics, desired outcomes) of these highly complex 6-figure projects. She had a great ability to see around corners, anticipate issues and treat them properly on time. As her responsibilities grew and many of us started inheriting some of those projects, the processes she had already setup made it easy for many of us to adapt and succeed. She’s also highly data-driven and would frequently put together analyses internally and for clients that would generate valuable insights for all. She works towards excellence. For ex, thanks to her initiative and vision, we were able to significantly increase our company’s average NPS scores to a very high industry standard. Customer success and retention under her leadership became one of YN’s main strengths/competitive advantages. She left a big mark at YN. As she became our COO, she helped bring clarity, transparency and a notable sense of order to the entire company. She navigated all the different aspects (People, Finances, Business Ops) with great attentiveness and resourcefulness. For ex, she helped define new KPI’s and processes for each of the teams including our sales/clients team, which helped us forecast more effectively, be more goal oriented and achieve better results. Any team can sleep well with someone with such strong management/organizational skills and strong strategic planning leading the way. I enthusiastically recommend Adele for any leadership role and any organization would be very lucky to have her.”

“I've had the privilege of working closely with Adele over the past year, first as co-coaches supporting a group of Year Up students and, following that, working on the operations team at Year Up Bay Area. Adele truly embodies the idea of "high support; high expectations" both in her management style as well as in her support of students. She expects top quality work while allowing the autonomy for individuals to determine what that looks like. As a coach, she deftly balanced support and firmness, always contextualizing feedback in a directly relevant way while simultaneously offering the support to convert on it. As a leader, she empowers her direct reports to take an active role in team projects and supports them as whole people. She pays attention to their passions and personality and shows up to support them even outside the office. Everything Adele does is intentional, thoughtful, and genuine and it distinguishes her leadership and management style from others.”