About Jesse

Jesse Ihde is a leader in the realms of identity and leadership coaching and organizational development. Her career journey is marked by a commitment to fostering holistic growth, cultivating conscious leaders, aligning organizational cultures and partnering with entrepreneurs to bring their visions to life. After owning and operating a successful business recognized as one of the “Best Places to Work in Dallas,” she then founded Trade Last to focus her energy on developing leaders and cultures. Trade Last is the practice of speaking well of one another and to one another. It’s about the commitment to lifting each other up.

Prior to coaching, Jesse spent more than a decade as a partner and owner building a marketing agency from the ground up. In partnership with clients and her team, she developed brands and communications strategies to align with organizational goals and then executed on those plans with a cohesive set of services including nationally-award-winning video production, public relations, social media, design and branding, content creation, email marketing and live event production.  

Jesse brings a unique blend of leadership, creativity, strategy, and growth to her clients. With a strong foundation in leadership development and a spectrum of experience across industries, she seamlessly transforms into an effective coaching partner for leaders and teams, from startups to nonprofit organizations to Fortune 500 companies.

Jesse's approach to coaching, training, and development reflects her deep understanding of the interconnected nature of human development, organizational systems, and tangible business results. She serves her clients as a strategic and creative thought partner, helping organizations, teams and leaders tackle their most significant challenges.

A Personal Journey

That which thou art

“The man who wishes to know the ‘that’ which thou art may set to work in one of three ways.”
- Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy

“I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.”
- Emily Dickinson

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I will give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song? 
- Rainer Maria Rilke

For as long as I can remember, I was desperate to know the that which I am.

My first day of grad school, they told us the five pillars of coaching are: self awareness, empathy, positive regard for others, genuineness and presence. And immediately I knew I was in the right place. This really is the vocation where my “deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” 

In this work, I see the work of all my life: an attempt to understand human nature in all its complexity, depth and paradox.

Parker Palmer says, “It takes time and hard experience to sense the difference between the two (the ego and the true self) - to sense that running beneath the surface of the experience I call my life, there is a deeper and truer life waiting to be acknowledged.”

This intersection between Philosophy, Spirituality, Psychology, Work, Organizational and Family Systems, and this thing called life has been calling to me for a long time. And now I get to sit at those intersections with you. We get to circle around your deeper and truer life and see what we can come up with. We get to teach each other a lot and skill up in our humanness, our connectedness and our wholeness. We seek to find that harmonious place where our let it go meets our make it happen.

I’ve been married to Josh Ihde since January 31, 2004. Then in 2007, we had Stella Ihde and then in 2011 we had Elijah Ihde. I’m a dog person, a book person, a travel person, a food and wine person. On Saturdays you can find me in basketball gyms. On Sundays you will find me in a range of sanctuaries including the dirt in my flower beds and garden, my back porch with my dogs, lost in a good book, laughing on the couch with my kids or folding laundry.

Enneagram 4. Meyers Briggs: INFP. Strengthfinders: Belief, Strategic, Input, Intellection, Connectedness.

how did you get into coaching?

It’s true what they say, that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but that’s not how I got here.

In December of 2015 I left behind my company (voted Best Places to Work by DBJ), my career (Partner/Owner and Creative Director), my church of 15 years and my rules of life to look beneath the surface of my life and begin to answer the call to that deeper and truer experience.  From the outside, I appeared to be living the modern woman’s dream: bustling career, business owner earning the badge of Best Places to Work in our city, successful and handsome husband, two adorable kids and three dogs. But below the surface, I was beaten-down and broken-hearted. I lost my true self in the dark side of this hollowed out a life where I quit living with the kind of intention it takes to design a whole life you love, the one you really want to live, the one you were created for. 

I took one year off, the last year my son was home before he would start Kindergarten, and gave myself the gift of this year to reflect on where I’d been, what was misaligned and broken in my life and how I could begin to live the most authentic version of myself. I felt like I was fighting for my life as I battled through bouts of depression, an uncertainty that I’d made the wrong choice, the loneliness of life without my teammates or friends who were still at work during the day and a lack of direction on where life would take me next.

As I found my way out of fear and into hope, back into my life with my family and my home and my community, I heard a calling towards not just a career, but a vocation, a way of being in the world. Even in my agency life, the work I loved the most was calling my team members towards the deeper and truer parts of themselves, building into their personal and professional development, encouraging them to live a life reflective of their values, and persevering on the journey to becoming whole.

I founded A Trade Last For You, LLC and began pursuing a vocation as a Life/Executive Coach. I partnered with a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Kate Goodell, to create and produce development workshops – Essential Deep Labs. At the conclusion of the first Lab, I knew this is what I was created for. I began working with one on one clients and teams and went back to school at UTD for their master’s program in Leadership and Organizational Development with a concentration in Executive Coaching.

what were you doing before you were a coach?

From 2004 to 2015 I was an Owner and Partner, alongside my sister Ashley Elsey, at Minerva Consulting, a marketing agency in Dallas, Texas focused on telling the stories of great organizations through integrated marketing and communications. I worked with a world-class team to define and design the brand and ethos of organizations and their leaders and to ensure the assets and content consistently, artfully and strategically reflected their goals and essence.  In partnership with clients, we developed communications strategies to align with organizational goals and then executed on that plan with a cohesive set of services including nationally-award-winning video production, public relations, social media, design and branding, content creation, email marketing and live event production.  

In 2012, we determined to move beyond our freelance and consulting capacity and become a full-service marketing agency. We went from moms around the dining room table to teams inside an office building in a sudden and sweeping season of growth. We were boss ladies, entrepreneurs building the bike while we were riding it, in an exciting and daring adventure where we determined everything is figureoutable. Building. Tinkering. Growing. With hard work, grit, laughter, coffee and wine, we built a team, opened offices in Richardson, Texas and served a range of outstanding clients including Freeman, Henry S. Miller, the Embrey Family Foundation, PESA, Dallas Women’s Foundation, Excellence in Education, Studio Movie Grill and others.  In 2015 we had the honor of receiving Dallas Business Journal’s Best Places To Work.