About OptimizeU

Our Story

Shahnaz Broucek founded OptimizeU in 2012 as a leadership coaching practice, working one-to-one with executives navigating complex roles and transitions. As the work grew, so did the conviction that lasting change requires more than coaching alone. It requires a team of experts working alongside leaders on strategy, culture, behavior change, and the systems that hold it all together. In 2021, the firm rebranded as OptimizeU Partners, expanding into the collaborative practice it is today, with human and organizational flourishing as the common thread across everything we do.

About Shahnaz Broucek

Shahnaz Broucek, founder of OptimizeU, brings more than 30 years of experience as an operator, educator, and executive coach. Before founding OptimizeU, she spent over a decade as the founder and president of a financial services firm she built and scaled to $500M+ in annual loan volume. That experience continues to shape her pragmatic, execution-focused approach to leadership development.

After earning her MBA from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, Shahnaz has spent the years since deepening the practice from multiple vantage points. She served on the Ross faculty for seven years as a Lecturer and Executive Coach, winning the Provost Teaching Innovation Prize for a peer coaching program she designed. She also served as Chief Leadership Coach and Culture Development Officer at Blue Compass RV, partnering with the CEO and executive team on leadership development, M&A integration, and culture alignment across 3,000+ employees and 100+ locations.

Shahnaz is an ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with advanced certifications in Hogan Assessments, stakeholder-centered coaching, team coaching, and leadership development.

Who We've Worked With

We are a team of senior coaches and consultants with complementary expertise across leadership, culture, and organizational development. Together, we've partnered with Fortune 500 companies, mid-market firms, and high-growth startups across healthcare, higher education, manufacturing, professional services, and tech. We've helped organizations build their strategic compass, redesign offerings and resource allocation to deliver on the outcomes that matter, and align their people around what comes next.

That's looked like:

• Guiding leadership teams through M&A integration and major change
• Coaching executives and senior leaders through transitions and expanded mandates
• Helping HR leaders build leadership bench strength and succession readiness
• Leading healthcare and institutions of higher education through culture change
• Partnering to design training and leadership development that drives strategy execution

Between us, we bring decades of experience and have worked with hundreds of leaders across the organizations we serve.

Strategy Isn't Enough

Across every engagement, we've seen the same pattern: strategy gets the headlines, but behavior determines whether anything actually changes. Culture and performance shift when leaders do, and those shifts last only when leaders and teams have what they need to keep showing up.

That's the work we do. Partner with us to turn strategy into action that endures.