Zachary Cochran is the award-winning Founder of Cochran Coaching LLC, one of the premiere Millennial-led professional development companies in Maryland. Zachary believes in helping his clients to find a better way through holding conversations with them: asking them open-ended questions to help them reflect and learn what’s important to them. Through these conversations, his clients are challenged to uncover their vision and goals and find a new path for their future in their career or business. He does this by running a company, Cochran Coaching LLC, founded in 2017, which supports the flourishing his clients by supporting their professional development.
Under this professional development umbrella, Zachary serves his clients with a variety of services: building and running custom leadership development programs, coaching business owners and executives, designing and delivering trainings and workshops on various topics, facilitating groups and retreats, and coaching individuals through career exploration and redesigns.
Zachary develops the next generation of leaders by delivering custom leadership development programs to organizations whose leaders are investing in their team’s growth. These programs support the organization by developing their management team (often middle managers) through coaching and trainings on relevant topics, such as delegation, prioritization, confidence building, emotional intelligence, performance management, and transferable skill identification and development. These programs drive productivity, effectiveness, and retention for their organizations.
As a business coach, Zachary often works with Millennial business owners or with those who aspire to start businesses. As an executive coach, Zachary works with executives to help them develop their teams and to navigate the generational and cultural differences often present between the leaders and their workforce. Zachary facilitates an exclusive CEO Roundtable lunch program, which is an informal peer advisory group community at the Maryland Innovation Center (MIC), the business incubator in Columbia, Maryland run by the Howard County Economic Development Authority. Zachary also works with the National Association Business Owners & Entrepreneurs (NABOE) in Rockville, Maryland as the co-host of their monthly breakfast events and quarterly workshops.
As a corporate trainer, Zachary designs and delivers trainings for clients. Outside of his custom leadership development programs, he often trains as a contractor of Howard Community College’s Training & Development Solutions. He also runs a monthly webinar for individuals who are seeking to navigate their career paths. His trainings have extended beyond the business community and into academia. He has run workshops to train high school teachers and administrators on best practices for career coaching (train the trainer). He also runs career fundamentals workshops at high schools for their students. He has presented on career exploration topics to classrooms of high school and college students who need a better foundation as they make decisions on college majors and career paths.
Zachary is called in to facilitate retreats and groups as a trained facilitator. Having learned effective facilitation methods by some of the best coaches in the State, Zachary has supported a variety of boards and organizations, as well as groups of business owners in peer advisory contexts. He was formerly a Partner/contract facilitator with Clark Leadership, a peer advisory group company based out of Baltimore.
As a career coach, Zachary supports the career management and exploration of individuals across all industries and ages. While most career coaches specialize on the job hunt, Zachary’s primary focus is on career direction and design—the phase that precedes a job hunt as it focuses the individual with clarity as to what they want to do for work that aligns with who they are. Zachary started his business to support young professionals who are seeking direction for their career paths.
In addition to his work with clients, Zachary volunteers in several areas within the Maryland business community. Zachary is the Immediate Past Chair of the Howard County Chamber’s Young Professionals Network (YPN) and is a committee member of the Young Professionals Group (YPG) at the BWI Business Partnership. In 2021 and 2022, Zachary sat on the Board of the BWI Business Partnership’s Community Development Foundation—a 501(c)3—as a Trustee. Before COVID, Zachary co-chaired a group for business owners at the Maryland Innovation Center, called the Founders Forum, to help business owners in Howard County and beyond continue to improve their businesses.
In 2023, Zachary was recognized by the Howard County Chamber of Commerce for his term of service on their Board of Directors and as the Chair of their young professionals program. Zachary was also chosen as the only young professional out of 700 member companies in the Chamber to be named “Young Professional of the Year” in 2023 by the Chamber. The Howard County Chamber’s Awards for Chamber Excellence (ACE) identifies and recognizes businesses and individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to their field, have achieved extraordinary success, and have improved the business community in general. Zachary was also honored as Young Professional of the Year in 2022 by the BWI Business Partnership.
Zachary and his wife Sylvie live in Baltimore, Maryland.
