Pluma

Pluma operates as a digital platform for professional development and executive-style coaching, functioning as a key component of Skillsoft's corporate learning offerings. Founded in 2015 by Alexandra Connell and Samuel Cabral, the company was established to address a gap in the market for scalable and accessible leadership training. The inspiration for Pluma came from Connell's experience as Chief of Staff at a biotech company, Solazyme, where she identified a need to develop emerging leaders post-IPO. Traditional seminars were seen as ineffective, and executive coaching was too costly to offer broadly.

With an undergraduate degree from Princeton and an MBA from Harvard Business School, Connell, alongside Cabral, leveraged technology to disrupt the conventional leadership development model. They developed a cost-effective, turnkey solution for creating better managers and leaders. The company's platform was designed to be customizable, measurable, and scalable, attracting enterprise clients such as Adobe, Dropbox, and Gap Inc. In June 2021, Skillsoft, a global leader in corporate digital learning, acquired Pluma for approximately $22 million in cash. This strategic acquisition marked Skillsoft's entry into the individualized coaching market, integrating Pluma's services into its AI-driven immersive learning platform, Percipio.

Pluma’s business model is centered on a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution delivered through a web and mobile application. The service provides users with personalized coaching, assessments, and actionable development plans to foster behavioral change. The platform facilitates unlimited in-app messaging and video sessions with a global network of hundreds of executive coaches, who cover six continents and speak over 20 languages. This model allows corporations to offer one-on-one leadership coaching to a wider range of employees, moving beyond just the executive level to include managers and individual contributors.

Keywords: executive coaching, leadership development, professional development, digital coaching, SaaS, corporate learning, skill development, employee training, talent management, Percipio platform