About Chris Waugh
Experienced Leadership. Practical Results.
For more than 30 years, I’ve helped organizations navigate growth, change, and leadership challenges. As an executive-for-hire, I don’t work from the sidelines. I step in as part of your leadership team, bringing experience and added capacity when the people side of performance needs attention.
My work centers on leadership, culture, and organizational alignment — creating clarity, strengthening accountability, supporting managers and helping people work better together.
What I Believe About Leadership and Culture
I believe culture is shaped every day by the way people lead, communicate, make decisions, solve problems, and hold one another accountable. It isn’t something you fix with a new mission statement or a team-building exercise.
As organizations grow and change, the culture that once worked may not keep pace. Roles become less clear. Communication gets harder. Managers get stretched. People can be working incredibly hard without really flying in formation.
That’s often when an experienced outside perspective — working from the inside — can make a difference.
A Different Kind of Leadership
You might need advice.
Or, you might need someone who can step in, earn trust quickly, and work alongside your leaders and employees.
That’s where I come in.
I become part of your team — listening, asking questions, identifying what’s getting in the way, and helping strengthen the leadership, culture, and alignment you need to move forward.
What Clients Value
- A steady, experienced leadership presence
- A trusted and confidential sounding board
- Clarity when roles, responsibilities, or priorities become unclear
- Skill at engaging people and strengthening culture
- The ability to quickly become part of the team
Don't become the bottleneck
For a manufacturing company, Chris helped lead two major priorities: relocating the manufacturing operation and achieving an important quality certification — without disrupting customer orders. Rather than managing every detail herself, she built a team capable of owning the work and gave them the support and authority to succeed.
The result: The operation moved without missing a customer shipment, and the company passed its quality certification on the first round.
Experience That Translates Across Industries
Every organization is different, but the leadership challenges you face are remarkably familiar.
Throughout my career, I’ve partnered with businesses, nonprofits, healthcare organizations, educational institutions, financial organizations, public agencies, and community organizations across the Pacific Northwest.
Representative organizations include:
- Georgia-Pacific
- Chinook Winds Casino
- Weyerhaeuser
- Umpqua Bank
- Oregon Alliance of YMCAs
- Samaritan Pacific Community Hospital Foundation
- Vintage Underground
Leadership In Action
Leadership isn’t something I only talk about—it’s something I’ve lived.
Since joining Rotary in 1987, I’ve served in numerous leadership roles. Most recently, as District Governor for Rotary District 5110, I worked alongside leaders across Oregon and Northern California in an organization of nearly 2,700 members across 69 clubs.
That experience reinforced something I’ve learned throughout my career: leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about helping people stay aligned, navigate complexity, and keep moving forward—even when demands exceed available capacity.
Why the Aviation Connection?
Throughout much of my leadership career, I spent my weekends flying hang gliders.
One of the first lessons every pilot learns is that turbulence isn’t always something to avoid. Often, it’s where the lift is.
Organizations aren’t all that different.
Growth, change, uncertainty, and transition often create turbulence. They also create opportunity. Leaders who recognize the lift within that turbulence—and have the capacity to act on it—can regain momentum and move farther than they thought possible.
That’s why “Find the Lift” has become more than a flying lesson. It’s the philosophy behind how I work with organizations every day.
Because even in turbulence, there’s lift to be found.
Ready to Turn Priorities into Progress?
The best place to start is a conversation.
We’ll talk about your organization, the priorities that matter most, and whether bringing in a fractional executive makes sense. If there’s a good fit, I’ll recommend the kind of support that will help you regain momentum. If not, I’ll tell you that, too.