25 years in the room…Now I build the room.
Cynthia Farrell is the founder of 110 West Group and creator of the Compass Team Experience, a structured approach to developing leadership teams and the individual leaders on them, in tandem and in sequence.
She brings over 25 years developing leaders and teams, including senior HR leadership inside high-growth tech and ademanding stretch as SVP of Human Resources at a PE-backed tech company through a $1.2B acquisition. That background gave her something most team coaches don’t have: a systemic understanding of how leadership behavior ripples through an entire organization, and what it actually costs when a team isn’t working.
Cynthia is known for bringing heart, courage, humor, and empathy into every room she works in, and for creating the kind of environment where people say the things they’ve been not saying.
MY PURPOSE
To facilitate connection.
My purpose is to facilitate connection: with myself, in my community, and in my work. In practice that means connecting leaders to themselves, to each other, and to the business they’re trying to build together.
The alchemy I create in a room
— the trust, the honesty, the alignment —
doesn’t leave when I do.
That’s the point: I’m the catalyst. Your team is the metal.
Once it’s forged, it holds.
When I’m not doing that work, you can find me living my best life
in the mountains of Colorado.
THE ORIGIN
The insight that changed how I work.
I didn’t set out to build a methodology. I built it by paying attention.
For nearly two decades, I developed leaders inside healthcare companies, consumer brands, and large enterprises. I designed programs, ran off-sites, coached executives. I excelled at it. But I kept noticing a gap.
It crystallized mid-career, inside a large consumer company navigating a messy leadership transition. A new president arrived with his entire inner circle. On one side: direct, loud, East Coast leaders. On the other: a deeply Midwestern team that communicated in what wasn’t said. Nobody brought them together with intention. The clash spread.
I co-facilitated an offsite that started differently, with an entire first day
devoted to trust and psychological safety before a single strategic priority was touched. By the end, the team wasn’t healed, but they were building. They had language for what had been unspoken.
What stayed with me was what the offsite didn’t reach: the individual leadership behaviors quietly eroding trust underneath the team dynamic. From that experience I understood that you can’t fix the team without addressing the leaders on it, and you can’t develop the leaders apart from the team they’re on. They have to be worked together, with intention. The Compass Team Experience came from that conviction.
WHAT SHAPED HOW I WORK
The path was anything but straight.
The consulting bio never captures the whole picture. Here’s more of it.
BACK ROADS & COW MANURE
The Midwest gave me my values.
Growing up in a farming community taught me things no MBA program does. Work hard. Do what you say. And learn to recognize sh*t when you smell it. Those aren’t just good values — they’re good leadership.
THANK YOU, MEAN GIRLS
Being bullied built my empathy.
For more than 30 years, I carried the baggage of being bullied in middle school. Now I value how it shaped me. It built my empathy, my courage, and my conviction that the cultures we create at work actually matter.
WORKING FROM “OM”
I’m just enough woo to make you curious.
Twenty-plus years into my career, I craved something more. Cue yoga teacher training. What I learned shifted how I lead, and it shows up in how I read rooms, coach leaders, and stay grounded in the hard moments.
THE STORY OF A NAME
The 110 West Group name has meaning.
On a trip to Bozeman, near the 110th West meridian — crossing mountains, rivers, and deserts — it clicked. Meridian. Pathway. Through-line. That’s what the work is. A steady guide through the hard terrain.
WHAT I BRING TO A ROOM
Hard to describe. Clients have tried.
I read rooms the way some people read text — picking up on energy shifts, the thing nobody said, who’s performing and who’s actually present. People tell me things in groups and in private that surprise even them.
My own leadership scars are part of how I work. I share them openly, which gives people permission to stop performing and start being honest.
IN THEIR WORDS
“She’s the Bob Ross of executive teams —
everything starts messy, nobody knows where it’s going,
and somehow by the end you have a beautiful painting.”
SVP OF SALES · PE-FUNDED HEALTH TECH COMPANY
CREDENTIALS & BACKGROUND
The work behind the work.
THE INSIDE SEAT
Senior HR Leadership,
High-Growth Tech
Systemic view of how leadership behavior ripples through an organization at scale.
FOUNDATION
L&D & OD Practitioner
Healthcare, consumer brands, large enterprises. Programs, offsites, executive coaching.
THE DEFINING STRETCH
SVP Human Resources, PE-Backed Tech
Led HR through a $1.2B acquisition. Firsthand understanding of what teams need under pressure.
SINCE 2019
Founder, 110 West Group
Built the thing I wished had existed on the inside. Working with growth-stage tech companies ever since.
CERTIFICATIONS
01
Leadership Circle Certified Practitioner
I’m one of a select group certified in the Leadership Circle Profile and Collective Leadership Assessment, the diagnostic instruments at the foundation of the Compass Team Experience.
02
Certified Executive Coach
I have a formal executive coaching certification (ACSTH) with continuing education in individual and team coaching modalities. I blend a structured coaching methodology with in-the-moment experience to meet the client’s needs.
03
EQi 2.0 & Inner Team Dialogue Certified
I achieved certification in the best-in-class emotional intelligence assessment, as well as the Inner Team Dialogue coaching modality. I use these to inform my approach to individual coaching and team dynamics.
Ready to talk?
No pressure, no pitch. Just a real conversation about where your team is and whether this is the right work for where you’re going.