Tiffany Smith

I spent more than fifteen years as an attorney advising executives through some of the most difficult workplace conflicts an institution can face. I sat with leaders during investigations, crises, and decisions where every option carried real consequences. That work taught me what leadership looks like under pressure, not what it looks like in a case study. I left the practice of law to become a resilience coach, and I bring those instincts to coaching now.  

Building Tulane's restorative practices program from the ground up taught me that repairing relational harm and building a new program start with the same skill: a genuine, hard conversation. Technical expertise gets a leader in the room. Resilience is what lets them stay there and lead well. I am now an Executive Leadership, Team, and Resilience Coach and serve as Director of Equal Opportunity and Resolution Management at Tulane, leading a team responsible for equal opportunity, conflict resolution, and compliance.  

My coaching draws on Positive Intelligence and mental fitness principles, appreciative inquiry, restorative practices, and strengths-based leadership. I use the systems thinking I built through years of legal and organizational leadership to spot the pattern beneath a conflict quickly. Clients tell me I help them separate what they can control from what they can't, and that they leave sessions with clarity instead of overwhelm.  

I earned my Executive Leadership, Team, and Resilience Coach certification through the Tulane University Leadership Institute and the Dickens Executive Coaching Academy in 2026, and I am pursuing an ICF credential in 2027. I hold a Juris Doctor from Loyola University New Orleans College of Law and a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Vanderbilt University.  I moved to New Orleans twenty-four days before Hurricane Katrina, and this city taught me what resilience looks like before I ever coached anyone through it. I coach the same way New Orleans rebuilds: true to who you are, through the chaos.