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PLIANT SOLUTIONS • PRESIDENT

Darren
Hoevel

Leadership & Agile Coach • Organizational Evolution

"It's not the critic who counts.... The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena." -Theodore Roosevelt

Darren Hoevel is a people person with 7.125 billion friends and counting. As co-founder of Pliant Solutions, his work spans leadership coaching, organizational design, and change management— helping leaders and teams do more than survive change. He helps them build the muscle for it.

He doesn’t coach from a distance. He brings two decades of real-world experience, a genuine love of people, and the kind of presence that makes hard conversations feel less like surgery and more like a breakthrough. (He’s pretty dang good at analogies, too.)

How He Works with You

01

Relentless self-awareness

Know who you are and exactly where you’re growing— no glossing over the uncomfortable stuff.

02

Grounded confidence

Vulnerability isn’t a liability. Darren helps leaders turn it into a source of genuine strength.

03

Systems clarity

See the whole, not just the parts. Patterns, constraints, and opportunities become visible.

04

Adaptive capability

You and/or your team learns to navigate uncertainty with intention— not just survive it.

Ready to Evolve?

No pressure. Just a real talk about what’s possible.

Darren's Full Story

HIS BELIEF

Lasting performance emerges when people, purpose, and systems align. Not through mandate. Not through templates. Through trust, honest reflection, and the willingness to ask the hard questions — and stay with the work.

His influences range from Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead and Grounded Confidence to Organizational Relationship Systems Coaching, interpersonal neurobiology, Lean thinking, and radical acceptance. In practice, this means he can hold space for a team falling apart and design the system that helps them rebuild — often in the same room, same day.

BACKGROUND

Before co-founding Pliant Solutions, Darren built deep expertise in agile product delivery, organizational design, and coaching across both the public and private sectors. He has partnered with large enterprise clients to scale new ways of working, improve cultural health, and design organizational structures that support sustained performance.

His facilitation and coaching work is rooted in evidence-based practice, emerging research, and real-world experience — not theory handed down from a podium.

Discover

Understand the system, the people, the real challenges

Design

Build the coaching or transformation approach together

Evolve

Iterate, learn, and grow— beyond the engagement

GUIDING PHILOSOPHY

THEODORE ROOSEVELT • CITIZENSHIP IN A REPUBLIC • APRIL, 23, 1910

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory or defeat.

This is the standard Darren holds himself to. And the one he helps his clients find for themselves. Leadership isn’t about having the right answer. It’s about being willing to step into the arena, do the work, and stay there even when it’s hard.

CREDENTIALS

Organizational Relationship Systems Coach (ORSC)

Certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator (CDTLF)

LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Facilitator (LSPf)

Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) Program Consultant (SPC)

Certified Scrum Professional (CSP)

Certified Scrum Master (CSM)

Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)

ICAgile Certified Professional in Agile Coaching (ICP-ACC)

ICAgile Certified Professional in Agile Team Facilitation (ICP-ATF)

Masters in Business Administration, George Fox University, ID

SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS

2024    Global Agility + Innovation Summit 

2024    AgileDC 

2020    NCMA Leadership Summit 

2020    Agile After Dark 

2020    Agile Charm 

2020    PMC for Excellence

2020    Agile Richmond InnoVAte Virginia

2019    Lean + AgileDC 

2019    Washington, DC PMI 

2019    Agile Alliance AgileXP 2019

2019    Agile Alliance Agile2019

2018-19    AgileDC

2016    AgileDC

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Organizational Design Forum

Organizational Relationships Systems Coaching

International Coaching Federation

AgileDC   

PMI / Agile Alliance

DC Organizational Agility Practitioners 

Greenville Mountain Biking

OBX Wingfoiling

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