Rebecca Gay

Rebecca Gay, PhD, PCC is an executive coach and organizational consultant who helps senior leaders navigate the tensions that define leadership: clarity and collaboration, accountability and trust, decisiveness and inclusion. She works with leaders and organizations facing growth, change, and increasing complexity, where difficult decisions must be made, competing demands navigated, and results delivered without sacrificing relationships.

Rebecca’s work sits at the intersection of leadership, organizational dynamics, negotiation, and adult development. Beginning her career as a mediator, she is deeply grounded in the interest-based negotiation and difficult-conversation frameworks developed through Harvard’s Program on Negotiation. She helps leaders move beyond surface-level behavior change to examine the assumptions, patterns, and relational dynamics shaping how they lead, enabling greater clarity, steadiness, and influence when the stakes are high and the answers are not obvious.

Rebecca partners with organizations through executive coaching, leadership development, facilitation, and organizational climate assessments. Her approach combines rigorous, time-tested theory with highly practical application. Her warm, engaging style and sense of humor put leaders and groups at ease, creating the conditions for candid conversations about difficult topics and meaningful, sustainable change.

In addition to her work with Oceans Coaching, Rebecca is a coach with EMBA students at MIT’s Leadership Center. Rebecca is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) through the International Coaching Federation. She holds a PhD in Social Science with a concentration in Conflict Resolution from Syracuse University.