Laura Martina has more than 20 years of experience in people management, organizational culture and leadership development.

A Fresno businesswoman built a career on helping other companies grow and succeed. Now she’s doing the same thing for herself.

Laura Martina is the founder and CEO of Leadby, a consulting firm providing leadership team development, executive development, and solutions to elevate effectiveness and help businesses activate company culture.

Martina has more than 20 years of experience in people management, organizational culture and leadership development. She is a certified executive coach accredited by the International Coaching Federation.

Prior to starting Leadby, she worked at the Fresno Chaffee Zoo as head of human resources, guest services and government affairs.

She gave a year-long notice and left the zoo to open Leadby in January 2023.

“I haven’t looked back since. There is so much work to do, but my friends at the zoo remain friends and are now clients,” Martina said.

She doesn’t consider her company an HR consulting firm because it is meant more to activate company leaders and support executives and mid-level managers.

Leadby also builds professional development programs for organizations internally, as well as a virtual manager skills program with the first cohort halfway done.

Martina offers virtual services, as she has clients across the country, including Texas and Rhode Island.

Along with her local clientele of business leaders, she also serves professionals in the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, which accredits zoo facilities.

Martina focuses on innovative small businesses that are growing and looking to build capacity in their leadership teams.

She also serves longer term clients who have workers that might have great skills but have never been in a position of leadership and might lack those skills.

“They have to make mistakes and learn the hard way, so I come in and help alleviate some of those mistakes and develop leaders ideally before they get promoted, but also after,” Martina said.

Martina said that some executives have a mindset of repeating what has worked in the past and bringing in money, but leaders need to have the ability to step back and adapt to changes to scale and grow a company.

While there has been a lot of discussion on the work ethic of different generations, Martina said it doesn’t matter what generation a worker is from. It’s about their personal beliefs and effort.

More businesses in recent years have been seeking out consulting services like the ones provided by Leadby as a way to stand up against competition.

Nonprofits are seeing more ways to build their organization’s culture where workers want to spend their time and not just make money.

Martina said Fresno tends to downplay itself, including its businesses, and businesses that don’t invest in their teams are wasting their time and energy by allowing workers to make the same mistakes and learn lessons the hard way.

Martina expects to eventually open a brick-and-mortar space in town with a studio for her virtual meetings and course building, but as the business is only one year old, Leadby is not at that point yet.

As more businesses and companies open up to remote work, the virtual consulting Martina provides is valuable as there is a culture challenge associated with remote work.

“Me and my contractors are all virtual. We are learning the challenges too so we can share what we learn with others,” Martina said.