About Silver Linings
The Financial Case for Strategic Outplacement
Bridging the Gap Between Business Reality and Human Dignity
You’ve spent years crafting a culture where people feel seen, valued, and safe. Your brand is built on creating impact with the triple bottom line, and your mission is the heartbeat of your organization. But now, the market has shifted, needs have changed, or an acquisition has taken place, and you find yourself facing the quiet crisis that every purpose-driven leader dreads: a restructure.
I’m Rachel MacDonald, and I founded Silver Lining Strategy because I’ve spent over 20 years sitting where you are now. Having led through highly visible organizational transitions, served as a professor for graduate students retiring from the military, and now intervening as a Career Coach for job seekers across sectors and levels, I realize that the traditional outplacement model is fundamentally broken.
It ignores the totality of the situation, leaving both the employee and the company vulnerable. You can protect your company’s future while honoring the people who helped you build it. Working together ensures that the way you say goodbye becomes a testament to why your company is a leader in your industry. Your legacy of social impact can remain intact, even during a season of change.
Are you ready to lead through this transition with integrity? Book a discovery call with me, and I will help you do just that.
The Team Behind Silver Lining Strategy
Rachel MacDonald, Founder
Board Certified Coach
Rachel MacDonald, PhD, is a results-driven leader, entrepreneur, and credentialed coach dedicated to unlocking both organizational and individual potential. Based near Seattle, she brings more than 20 years of global HR leadership, executive coaching, and academic instruction experience to her role as the founder of Silver Lining Strategy.
Her mission as a coach is to serve as a trusted guide, helping clients bridge the gap between their current reality and an optimized future with clarity, confidence, and resilience.
Rachel’s professional journey includes leadership roles at Fortive Corporation, Willow Technologies, ExecuScribe, and the Jewish Community Center of Rochester, where she specialized in leadership development, organizational design, and people strategy across culturally and geographically diverse teams. She has coached hundreds of professionals on career transitions, inclusive leadership, psychological safety, personal growth, and program design, leveraging adult learning principles and behavioral science to inspire sustainable success. Her work includes designing and delivering executive coaching programs and implementing leadership models that foster innovation and inclusive cultures.
As a Certified CareerCOACH™, Rachel provides premier personal and professional development programs tailored to transitioning executives and pivoting professionals. She serves as a graduate faculty member for Park University, where she develops and teaches courses in Adult Learning and Organizational Leadership. Her ability to integrate academic rigor with real-world coaching practice makes her an invaluable resource for clients seeking both personal insight and practical strategies.
With 15 years of Fortune 500 HR leadership experience and Master’s-level training in Business Administration and Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Laura offers a rare dual perspective on career coaching. She helps professionals navigate the complexities of stress, change, and executive decision-making while honoring the profound impact work has on identity, financial security, and emotional well-being.
Throughout her HR career, Laura has coached leaders and professionals navigating performance challenges, role expansion, organizational change, and career advancement. She has supported leaders in building clarity and effectiveness in high-pressure environments across a range of industries, including technology, advanced manufacturing, oil & gas, and real estate. She takes pride in supporting clients as they build a vibrant life aligned with their values.
Mental Health Coach
Laura Handley, MBA
Andrea Edmondson
Executive Coach, Founder of NeuroSmart™
Andrea Edmondson is a leadership coach, keynote speaker, and educator dedicated to unlocking sustainable performance in both leaders and the coaches who develop them. Based in the UK, she brings over two decades of experience in leadership development, nervous system science, and coach training to her work as the founder of Andrea Edmondson and creator of the Capacity Before Strategy framework. She holds a Master of Education, underpinning her commitment to rigorous, evidence-informed practice.
Her mission as a coach is to serve as a trusted guide, helping leaders and organisations bridge the gap between where they are and what they are capable of — by addressing the biological foundations that make strategy, change, and performance possible in the first place.
Andrea's professional journey spans executive coaching, group programme delivery, and keynote speaking across sectors including entrepreneurship, professional services, and corporate leadership. She has coached leaders navigating high-pressure growth, organisational change, and role expansion, and has trained coaches to integrate neuroscience into their practice in ways that produce lasting results for their clients. Her work is grounded in the science of the body-brain relationship, developed in part through her own experience of burnout and the insight it produced about capacity as a structural — not motivational — challenge.
As the creator of the NeuroSmart™ methodology, Andrea provides a rigorous, neuroscience-informed coach training programme that equips practitioners to work with the biology underlying behaviour, decision-making, and leadership performance. Her ability to translate complex science into accessible, applicable frameworks makes her a distinctive voice for organizations and coaches seeking both intellectual depth and practical impact.