Work with Jessica
About
Hi, I’m Johanna Danaher. I’m a coach, a former people leader, and someone who has always been drawn to the ocean. I grew up in New York, spent my summers in Maine, and went to college in Maine. That coastal rhythm shaped me. It is probably why my work is all about helping people stay steady while they are in motion. I started out in marine biology before taking an unexpected turn into HR and leadership development. What connects those worlds is curiosity and pattern spotting. In science, you learn to observe what is happening beneath the surface, look for signals, and adjust based on what you find. That is how I coach, too. For 25 plus years at Pfizer, I led work in culture, talent, and career growth. I built and scaled programs that supported early talent, internal mobility, and leader development across a global organization. Now I bring that blend of strategy and humanity to coaching across career transitions, leadership growth, and life redesign, because most turning points touch more than one part of life. On the personal side, I’m a mom to a college aged daughter who keeps me laughing and grounded. Clients often describe me as calm, direct, and deeply supportive. We will name what is real, get clear about what matters, and build a plan you can actually follow.
Jessica also coaches for Life Coaching, Leadership Coaching, Human Resources, and Executive Coaching. View all.
Jessica’s Career Coaching Qualifications
Coaches professionally
Experience level: Director
40+ Career Coaching clients
If you’re at a crossroads, you don’t need more generic advice. You need clarity on what you actually want, language that captures what you’re great at, and a strategy you can follow without second-guessing yourself. In our work, you’ll get focused support to identify the right next roles, translate your strengths into a compelling story, and take confident action—resume, LinkedIn, networking, interviews, and decision decisions included. My approach is shaped by 25 years at Pfizer leading career growth and early talent—designing the programs, frameworks, and pathways that help people move. I built enterprise-wide career growth initiatives, supported mobility across functions, and helped early-career talent launch strong starts. I understand what hiring leaders look for, how internal and external moves really happen, and why capable people get stuck even when they’re doing everything “right.” You’ll leave with a clear direction, sharper positioning, and a step-by-step plan you’ll actually use. Expect practical tools, honest reflection, and momentum you can feel—because your next chapter deserves more than guessing.
Jessica can help with:
Career Planning
General Exploration
Leadership
Networking Strategy
Personal Branding
Professional Networking
Why do I coach?
Coaching matters to me because I know what it feels like when the next step is not obvious. You can be capable on paper and still feel unsettled inside. I have lived through chapters of change that asked me to rethink who I was and what I wanted, including health shifts, personal loss, and a major career disruption after a long and meaningful season of work. Those experiences taught me that transitions are not just logistical. They are identity level. What helped me most was not more pressure or a perfect plan. It was having space to tell the truth, get clear about what mattered, and take one grounded step at a time. That is what I love about coaching. It gives people a place to think, feel, and choose on purpose, so they can move forward with clarity and self trust, not just momentum or someone else’s definition of success.
Work Experience
Leadership, Career, Life Coach
Anchor to Aspire, LLC
January 2025 - Present
Anchor to Aspire was born from a belief I’ve lived and coached: we are most powerful when anchored in who we are and open to what’s next. Like the ocean, transformation is never linear—it’s tidal—sometimes calm, sometimes chaotic. I help professionals navigate those waves—career transitions, leadership growth, reinvention—with clarity, energy, and purpose. Coach and consultant guiding clients through job changes, burnout recovery, and identity shifts Delivered 250+ hours of coaching across 1:1 sessions and group programs Design custom coaching experiences that integrate values alignment, mindset shifts, and energy awareness Facilitate workshops on resilience, personal leadership, and navigating change with intention Help clients clarify goals, move through internal and external roadblocks, and create aligned action plans Leadership Coaching , Transformational Life Coaching and +1 skill
Senior Director, Career Growth & Talent Management
Pfizer
December 2022 - April 2025
In my role as Sr. Director of Career Growth & Talent Management at Pfizer, I led enterprise-wide work to strengthen how colleagues grow, how leaders assess and develop talent, and how internal mobility becomes part of the culture—not just a program. I helped integrate career growth, talent assessment, succession planning, and talent mobility into a more connected ecosystem, and reimagined how both colleagues and managers could take ownership of development in a practical, repeatable way. A major part of that work included launching and expanding Growth Universe, a centralized platform where colleagues could explore growth experiences, build new skills, and connect across roles and regions. Through this ecosystem, more than 2,750 colleagues participated in 1,200+ growth opportunities, and the launch of net GROWing further strengthened peer connection and development, resulting in 8,714 colleague profiles and 4,725 connections made between 9/2023–10/2024. I also helped establish a stronger cadence of manager-led growth conversations, contributing to a 64% increase in Development Plan submissions in Workday and supporting over 60,000 colleagues in completing career fields in their profiles. On the talent side, I enhanced Workday talent data integration and supported an 85% completion rate for talent assessments—giving leaders better visibility to plan transitions, tailor development, and make smarter placement decisions. In addition, I built and operationalized an executive coaching strategy by strengthening vendor partnerships, standardizing tracking and outcomes, and creating tools that improved intake, matching, and clarity of focus. I supported scalable coaching through BetterUp across 2,200+ global participants, with consistently high engagement and strong ratings for value and impact. Alongside these enterprise initiatives, I personally delivered 100+ hours of coaching, including 1:1 and group coaching, supporting meaningful growth and change for individuals and teams in a complex, fast-moving environment.
Director, Talent Pipeline
Pfizer
December 2021 - December 2022
In this role, I reimagined Pfizer’s growth and talent strategy to help colleagues take real ownership of their career development — while also strengthening how managers collectively steward talent across the organization. One of the most defining contributions was pioneering the “zig-zag” growth model, a practical framework that normalized non-linear career moves and expanded what “growth” could look like beyond promotions. Since 2021, this approach has supported 5,000+ diagonal moves, helping colleagues build broader skills, enterprise perspective, and long-term career momentum. Alongside that work, I developed programs and resources designed to build more diverse talent pipelines, increase internal mobility, and strengthen equitable access to growth opportunities across functions and regions. I also created tools focused on career growth during times of change, helping employees stay proactive and grounded even when external conditions shifted. A key focus throughout the year was establishing a unified language for growth — so development conversations became more meaningful, outcome-focused, and consistent across leaders, teams, and markets.
Director, Colleague Experience
Pfizer
January 2020 - December 2021
As Director of Colleague Experience, I led strategy and execution across engagement, inclusion, well-being, and culture — designing experiences that supported colleagues through a period of enormous change. This work spanned both enterprise initiatives and practical improvements that made day-to-day work better, more connected, and more human. I elevated Pfizer’s employer branding through 32 unique social media campaigns across 13 priority markets, targeting five distinct audience groups and contributing to a 26% increase in content share rate and 40%+ growth in followers across global @pfizerCareers channels. I also led change management for the NYHQ transformation, translating executive vision into clear behavioral shifts and creating a structured plan of interventions to help employees adopt new ways of working. In addition, I directed the assessment of Human Capital disclosures, identifying key metrics aligned to Pfizer’s strategic plan and developing narratives that strengthened transparency across equity, leadership, growth, engagement, and retention. I also implemented onboarding “quick wins” that improved the new hire experience during the COVID-19 pandemic — enabling smoother remote onboarding and laying the groundwork for broader enterprise improvements.
Director, Culture
Pfizer
June 2017 - January 2020
In my culture leadership role, I helped shape and deliver Pfizer’s enterprise culture strategy, including the work that ultimately contributed to the successful launch and sustainability of OWNIT!. I built communications strategies and engagement approaches designed to make culture feel real and lived — not abstract — by bringing shared values into everyday actions, leadership behaviors, and team norms. A cornerstone of this work was designing and leading annual global culture day celebrations (2013–2019) with themes such as Straight Talk, Thriving in Change, Head Heart Guts leadership, and personal energy management. I also led key aspects of OWNIT! Day’s virtual experience, helping launch Pfizer’s first global “virtual conference” style engagement — creating interactive online content that supported participation and connection across regions. To enable local teams to activate culture in meaningful ways, I designed planning resources and toolkits that made it easier to bring culture themes to life in real time. Across this work, I developed communications and engagement strategies that increased global participation, strengthened consistency across markets, and reinforced culture as something colleagues could shape — not just receive.
Sr. Manager, Talent & Organizational Capability
Pfizer
January 2012 - December 2017
As Sr. Manager in Talent and Organization Capability, my focus was helping colleagues, managers, and leaders access the right talent and growth information at the right time — and making complex talent processes easier to understand, use, and trust. I led work to improve the clarity and uptake of enterprise talent solutions by strengthening communication strategy, standardizing messaging across channels, and helping teams connect the dots across offerings. I developed and delivered an Integrated Talent Portal as a destination for learning, created a Talent, Career, and Organizational Solutions Catalogue that made resources easier to navigate, and built an Annual Talent and Culture Report to increase transparency and awareness of how talent processes worked. I also shaped an enterprise social networking strategy designed to strengthen informal learning, collaboration, and productivity — supporting teams in embedding social connection into their solutions and ways of working. During this time, I partnered closely with HR Change Management to support large-scale global transformations impacting 100,000+ employees across 90+ countries, including the rollout of a new global performance management process, the transition from PeopleSoft to Workday, and the execution of HR On Demand.
Manager / Sr. Manager, Global Talent Acquisition – Branding & Operational Excellence
Pfizer
January 2009 - December 2012
In this role, I helped unify Pfizer’s employer value proposition globally — strengthening how the organization showed up to candidates, improving brand consistency across regions, and elevating the overall candidate experience. I led multi-channel employer branding initiatives and media campaigns designed to increase the visibility of open roles and attract diverse talent across markets. This work contributed to measurable growth across Pfizer’s recruitment channels, including a 44% increase in total traffic to the global careers website, alongside expanded visibility and engagement across social platforms. At its core, the role was about aligning brand strategy with real candidate experience — ensuring the story we told externally matched the culture we were building internally.
Education
University of Maine
BA, Zoology, Public Relations
1991 - 1995
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18 reviews
Overall rating
Jessica has helped Leland clients get into Genentech
Jessica also coaches for Life Coaching, Leadership Coaching, Human Resources, and Executive Coaching. View all.
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