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About Combustion

Founded in 2012, Combustion is an award-winning company that provides highly experiential, relevant, irreverent, and no-BS training designed to help people be and do better the very next day.

From tech, advertising, financial services, to consumer-packaged goods and beyond, we’ve successfully delivered unforgettable workshops to Fortune 500 companies across the globe.

Combustion’s commitment to ‘loving the people’ and delivering every transformation-worthy experience with humanity and authenticity is what we’ve built our reputation on.

Leslie Ehm

Leslie Ehm – Founder, President & Chief Firestarter

Leslie is a former Creative Director and TV host turned award-winning training guru, speaker and Swagger coach whose sole purpose is to unleash the potential in every human she encounters. Leslie has spent the last 15 years travelling the globe, training senior execs and teams from companies like Google, Pepsico, Uber, Disney, TD Bank, Lenovo, Best Buy, Leo Burnett, FCB Global, and many more.

She’s turned technologists into creative forces, bankers into storytellers, built leaders from the ground up, and has brought a serious dose of badass to boardrooms everywhere.

She’s been called “better than therapy”, “a rock star”, “ass-kicking”, “a force of nature” and even “a witch”.

Leslie is also the Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of Swagger – Unleash Everything You Are and Become Everything You Want.

Why Choose Combustion?

Training companies are a dime a dozen. To choose one over the other, there better be a clear differentiator and proof of it. Combustion has that in abundance.

Combustion lives its principles:

First, everything we do is driven by authenticity. It’s how we behave, deliver experiences and what we aim to build in your people – regardless of the skill. We keep it real, relevant and BS-free. And we have a lot of fun doing it.

Next, Combustion doesn’t hire ‘trainers’. Instead, we find respected subject matter experts and teach them how to be trainers in our unique mold. We want them to be able to understand your real-life situations and answer the tough, situational and necessary questions your people will have in your workshops.

What we do works – and we have proof. Examples include an Institute for Performance Learning (I4PL) award for Learner Impact, a 40% promotion rate out of a Fortune 500 company leadership program, credit for changing company culture, and an increase in employee requested training and attendance in several companies due solely to their Combustion experience. And that’s just for starters.

Our number one stated corporate value is LOVE THE PEOPLE. To that end, we never compromise. Our commitment is to relentlessly drive the learning we know your people need to get the results that we promise. We do it with authenticity, compassion, irreverence, relevance, and expertise.