About
Shelley and Doug Smith
Doug Smith, MSSW, ACC, Managing Partner of D-Degree Coaching and Training Doug is a speaker, trainer, and consultant with over 12 years of experience in leadership development, coaching and teaching. Doug’s unique expertise working with those with lived experiences and utilizing innovative coaching techniques enables organizations to embark on a transformative journey.
Doug utilizes the Breakthrough Action Leadership Model™, a unique leadership development approach created by David Mensah of Wave Consulting. The designed to orient team members powerfully to the results they are already producing. As a seasoned veteran in the field of leadership development, Doug brings a profound understanding of the complexities of team dynamics and personal growth. With an empathetic approach coupled and a strengths-based perspective, he facilitates transformative experiences as he guides participants through the program. What sets this leadership development program apart is not just the training itself, but the experience.
Picture brief powerful coaching sessions unfolding right in the room, a dynamic and personalized approach that breaks through the typical barriers to personal effectiveness.
Doug creates an environment where participants actively engage with the material, responding to it in real-time. Breakthrough Action Leadership isn't just an investment in training, but a powerful transformation within the team’s he works with.
You’ll notice a profound shift in leadership culture, where individuals embrace responsibility, engage in self-reflection, seek feedback, and create leaders around them. It's more than a training; it's a breakthrough for your organization's potential.
Doug brings over 12 years of experience grounded mental health and justice policy, as a policy expert at the Texas House of Representative and later as Senior Policy Analyst for Texas Center on Justice and Equity (formerly, Texas Criminal Justice Coalition). Additionally, he has served as an Adjunct Professor of Social Policy at the University of Texas at Austin since 2015.
Doug helps leaders develop innovative approaches to complex problems, through creative facilitation experiences and individual/group coaching. He has successfully led organizations in creating leadership pipelines for emerging leaders and improving the leadership capacity of all team members. Doug specializes in developing programs that unleash the leadership potential of people with lived experience of mental illness, past trauma, and incarceration. A foundation of his work is partnering with organizations to create trauma-informed leadership practices.
As a Board Member and Treasurer of the Austin/Travis County Sobering Center, Doug helped to launch what has now become one of the most innovative arrest diversion programs in the county. Currently he serves on the Board of Directors for the Pretrial Justice Institute, which has transformed into a national leader in antiracist pretrial justice. Doug earned his master’s in social work from the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated from Erickson Coaching International and is accredited by the International Coaching Federation.
Doug also has lived experience of mental illness, substance use disorder, and incarceration, and these experiences drive his passion to help people achieve their fullest potential.
“Doug's approach is gentle but firm, and he can gracefully get me to my own conclusions. I appreciate most that he is guiding and facilitating rather than directing and that he helps me to see my own power and hear my own intuition rather than telling me what I should do next. I always feel very supported and respected, like he is meeting me where I am, but also that he is pushing me to be my best and to own both my successes and opportunities for growth.”
—Laura Elmore