The former Fortune 500 executive introduced Beyond Success™, a 12-week program for leaders who have met their goals and still feel unsettled, to attendees on August 8.
BALTIMORE, Md., Aug. 11, 2026. When Lisa L. Baker walked onto the Leadership Experience Tour (LET) stage on August 8, the room already knew her resume, which includes more than two decades in senior roles at Citigroup, Microsoft and Synchrony, followed by the founding of leadership development firm Ascentim®. What they weren’t prepared for was how directly she would challenge them.
What Beyond Success Asks Leaders to Confront
Baker used her time on stage to introduce Beyond Success™, a 12-week program for leaders who have already hit their goals and still feel something isn’t adding up. The talk focused less on performance and more on motive. She asked the audience to examine who had written the definition of success they were chasing. Several attendees stayed after the session to keep the conversation going.
“Leaders often build very successful careers only to find themselves dissatisfied because they never stopped to ask what they truly wanted,” Baker told the audience. “‘Should’ is always someone else’s agenda for your life.”
It was the kind of line that landed differently coming from someone who has been in the rooms she was describing. She was not offering a theory about executive burnout. She spent 20 years climbing before she started asking the question herself.
How the Beyond Success Program Is Structured
Three phases shape the program: Reclaim Yourself, Redefine Success, and Rise to Your Greatness. Each one is designed to help participants separate inherited definitions of success from ones they would choose on their own. Cohorts are capped at 12 participants and run entirely virtually over 12 weeks.
The small cohort size is deliberate. Group coaching at this level depends on participants speaking candidly about decisions they would never raise in a staff meeting, and that candor is harder to reach in a crowded room. Because every participant moves through the same phase at the same time, the group builds a shared vocabulary for the questions they are working through.
Why the Message Reaches Senior Leaders
Lisa L. Baker encountered this pattern first inside three Fortune 500 companies and then again across her coaching practice. Senior leaders reach the title, the compensation and the scope they set out to earn, only to find the goal had been set by someone else. Sorting out which ambitions are actually theirs takes deliberate reflection, and that rarely fits between board meetings.
Her LET session drew executives, coaches, and entrepreneurs. Applications for the current Beyond Success™ cohort are open on the Beyond Success leadership program page.
About Lisa L. Baker and Ascentim®
Lisa L. Baker is the founder of Ascentim®, an award-winning leadership development firm that works with executives and teams to strengthen decision-making and performance under pressure. A former Fortune 500 executive with more than 20 years of experience at organizations including Citigroup, Microsoft, and Synchrony, Baker is a member of the Forbes Coaches Council and a two-time Inc. Best in Business award recipient (2022 and 2023). She has been featured in Forbes, CEO Weekly, NY Weekly, The Chicago Journal, and San Francisco Post, and Ascentim® was named a Globee® Woman-Owned Startup of the Year honoree.
Media Contact:
Lisa L. Baker
Ascentim®
ascentim.com
