Daughters of Greatness: Maryanne Elliott

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Maryanne Elliott works with CEOs and business owners through Vistage, the world’s largest CEO peer advisory organization. She leads groups where executives step away from the pressures of daily leadership to think out loud, examine the real issues beneath the surface, and refine how they make decisions. She is also the founder of The Acorn Group, where she designs leadership development programs and works one on one with leaders to help them align who they are with how they lead.

Maryanne’s professional journey has unfolded across several chapters. She began her career in commercial and small business banking, where she learned that financial results are inseparable from leadership and culture. That realization led her into the field of organizational development, consulting nationally with organizations on culture, leadership, and change.

She later purchased and led a business within an international training organization, delivering programs in productivity, communication, and leadership across industries. The experience of building and running a business deepened her understanding of leadership not as theory, but as daily responsibility, guiding people, navigating uncertainty, and learning resilience through both success and failure.

Earlier in her career, Maryanne conducted a multi year research study on compassionate leadership, exploring how compassion functions as a leadership capability within organizations. The work examined how leaders who combine accountability with humanity strengthen trust, invite courage in others, and ultimately improve performance. The study contributed to an early model describing compassionate leadership as a disciplined leadership practice that builds stronger people, stronger cultures, and better results.

Over more than two decades, Maryanne has coached leaders across sectors and led thousands of leadership workshops. She holds a Doctorate in Human and Organizational Learning from The George Washington University and has taught in the Master of Science in Human Resources and Organizational Development program at the University of Louisville.

Maryanne has also been egaged in civic and community leadershnip. She has served on the WaterStep Board of Directors, is an Ambassador for WaterStep, and has served on the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education and the Kentucky Performing Arts Board, contributing to efforts that strengthen access to education, the arts, and global clean water initiatives.

In April 2023, Maryanne’s life changed when her husband, Tommy Elliott, was killed in the mass shooting at Old National Bank in downtown Louisville. In the years since, she has chosen to respond not with withdrawal but with purpose, working to strengthen community, deepen conversations about grief and resilience, and honor the values that defined Tommy’s life.

Through the Tommy Elliott Fund, she launched StoryFest, a nonprofit storytelling initiative that equips mission driven organizations to tell their stories more effectively and connect communities around meaningful causes. The program brings nonprofit leaders together with professional coaches to develop personal narratives that build empathy, understanding, and support for the work being done across Louisville.

Maryanne has also written about grief and leadership, documenting the lived experience of loss and recovery. Her writing explores courage not as heroic strength, but as the quiet, daily decision to continue living fully even after life has been irrevocably changed.

She believes leadership is ultimately about courage, the courage to examine ourselves honestly, to lift others as we rise, and to build organizations and communities where people can flourish.

Maryanne is the proud mother of twin daughters, Emily and Katherine, who continue to inspire her through the lives they are building and the women they have become. Her lifelong love of learning and teaching began early, when her grandmother gave her three small school desks and she began teaching neighborhood children what she had learned in school that day.

That early instinct, to learn, to teach, and to help others grow, continues to guide her work today.