Dylan Welch: What Kickboxing Coaching Teaches About Executive Discipline

Dylan Welch is the founder and CEO of Welch International, an international relations and strategic advisory firm based in St. Petersburg, Florida, and he is also a kickboxing and fitness coach. This feature in our leadership series asks what that coaching discipline offers as a lens on executive leadership, and how it sits alongside his work in business development, strategic partnerships and the United Nations system.

Why does fitness matter to executive leadership?

The question is no longer a lifestyle footnote. CNBC reported in May that 71% of leaders reported increased stress in Development Dimensions International’s Global Leadership Forecast 2025, up from 63% in 2022. The firm surveyed 10,796 first-level, mid-level, senior-level and C-suite leaders worldwide. The same report noted that burned-out executives can trigger a “stress contagion” through their organization.

For executives, diplomats and investors, the practical point is that a leader’s condition is an operating variable. It shapes judgment, tempo and the tone a team takes from the top. That is where a coach’s perspective becomes relevant, and where the profile of Dylan Welch is unusual. These findings come from outside research and do not describe Welch International or its work.

What does kickboxing coaching bring to leadership?

This section is our editorial reading, not a claim about how Dylan Welch runs his firm. Kickboxing and fitness coaching are built on a few plain demands: show up consistently, repeat fundamentals until they hold under pressure, take honest feedback, and stay composed when conditions change. Those are also the habits executives need in long negotiations, delicate partnerships and crowded calendars.

The rest of the record fits that pattern. Dylan Welch spent about a decade as an international expedition guide, leading expeditions is not a phrase to dwell on here, so the plain facts suffice: he led expeditions across Europe, South America and Asia and has organized philanthropic expeditions internationally. His background also includes broadcast production and UN-adjacent foundation operations, and he co-founded and exited a green media company. We examined the expedition years in an earlier piece, Dylan Welch: What a Decade Leading Expeditions Says About Leadership. Coaching adds a second, more everyday form of the same discipline: preparation, pacing and consistency, practiced regularly rather than occasionally.

What does Welch International do?

Welch International specializes in business development, strategic partnerships and operations across the public sector, the private sector and the multilateral system. It helps governments, companies and multilateral institutions build the partnerships, pipelines, and operations that turn shared goals into measurable results.

Its work is organized into three services:

• Develop: business development, including mapping markets and stakeholders, securing decision-maker introductions and shaping pipelines.
• Partner: designing public-private alliances, building coalitions and guiding engagement with the UN system.
• Operate: standing up programs, cross-border operating models and high-level convenings.

The firm lists its principles as trusted access, cross-sector fluency, discretion, execution and senior attention, with direct principal involvement on every mandate. Execution and senior attention are the principles closest to the theme of this feature. Both depend on sustained effort from the person at the top, not on delegation alone. Dylan Welch also works as a private contractor for the United Nations and is an expert in business development, strategic partnerships and communication strategy, a subject covered in Dylan Welch: Why Communication Strategy Decides Cross-Sector Work.

Where does that discipline show up in practice?

The clearest public example is the Global Leadership Forum, which Dylan Welch founded and hosts. Its 2026 edition, the New York Innovation Forum for Sustainable Development, was held September 21 and 22, 2026, at 777 UN Plaza in New York. It was timed to Climate Week NYC and the 81st UN General Assembly, and was co-hosted by Peace Boat US, which holds ECOSOC Special Consultative Status, and Welch International.

Partners and sponsors included Siemens, the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, RMI, the Roosevelt Alliance, Blue Planet Alliance, HNO International and the Global Leadership Network. Programming included a Business and Innovation Forum, a Nature Conservation Forum for a Renewable Energy Future and a Climate Week Family Office Forum. Running a two day, multi-track event during one of the busiest weeks on the diplomatic calendar is a test of preparation and stamina as much as of contacts.

His other roles point the same way. Dylan Welch is co-founder of the Global Leadership Network, Chief Development Officer of the Roosevelt Alliance, a land and nature conservation policy organization, and founder of Intelligence Report and host of The Intelligence Report Podcast. That is a heavy portfolio, and sustaining it is the kind of performance question this series is designed to explore.

Work with Welch International

Governments, corporations, multilateral institutions, nonprofits and foundations that want to build partnerships, enter new markets or engage the UN system can speak directly with Dylan Welch. Book a confidential 30 minute consultation to discuss how Welch International can help.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Welch International
• Executives are burning out, just like their employees, and they don't know how to handle it, management experts say
• Welch International
• Intelligence Report
• Dylan Welch: What a Decade Leading Expeditions Says About Leadership
• Dylan Welch: Why Communication Strategy Decides Cross-Sector Work
• Effects of physical activity on job burnout in college administrative teachers with chain mediation of psychological resilience and disengagement

Intelligence Report is published by Welch International. This article is part of our series on the leadership behind the publication.

This article was produced by the Intelligence Report Desk. Sources are linked below.