Hi! Welcome to Ascend Professional Pathways! I am Thomas Passalacqua, an experienced and diverse educator & sales leader with a mission to empower others to be the best versions of their professional selves.
My story...
The Start...
My passion for helping and supporting others stems way back to high school where I would help classmates with fitness advice. I always appreciated being asked to guide them to improve their performance and I really embraced enabling growth for those passionate to get results. This led me to pursue a master’s in education and I taught for several years throughout New York City where I built school-wide programs and initiatives and even was a founding faculty of a few new start-up schools. This is where I developed strong organizational and engagement skills and the ability to embolden the success of the learner. My passion for supporting others’ growth was further fueled as I refined these core principles and was able to provide consistent and predictable results.
The second step...
After several years, I transitioned out of education into direct sales for a leading healthcare manufacturing company where I challenged myself to succeed in a vastly different field and industry. Applying the same guiding principles that I crafted in education, I built strong relationships, became a valuable resource, and was relentlessly consistent in my role as a sales representative. Learning a completely new world of content and skills, I excelled in this role and became a top sales rep earning President’s Club status numerous times in various categories. My passion for helping others succeed came to the forefront again as I started to train and coach other sales reps and even present during national sales meetings and host web trainings for the company. I found that my education background paired with my sales experience was a perfect environment to help enable other sales professionals to better improve their skills.
The third phase...
The next chapter for myself was in a business development role for mergers & acquisitions in a growing healthcare management company. This is where I had to expand my capacity to engage with successful practice owners and build trusting relationships and provide meaningful solutions. I was also leading the direct sales and marketing efforts for the team and had to apply strategies and be nimble to best support prospective partners. Again, the foundational principles that I relied upon in the past allowed me to be successful and contributed to building a multi-million-dollar company.
Today...
Still feeling the passion to help others, I embarked on the journey to getting certified as an executive coach and created this leadership development business, bringing all my experience and talents together to best support other sales professionals and company executives. I am leaning into that internal drive to teach and support fellow professionals; knowing that I have so much more to offer the world as it is my purpose to help those around me to succeed in their own journeys.
When I am not crafting ways to elevate others, you can find me in the gym, walking my dog around town, playing guitar, or wrestling with my kids. It is my hope that I can inspire and support you to find success in your own missions and realize that you too can achieve the internal ambitions that that drive you in your professional lives as well. Thank you!
Thomas Passalacqua
At Ascend Professional Pathways, our ideal world is one in which all people perform at their best abilities and highest potential. They would be confident and effective in their roles and find fulfillment in their professional lives, being self-reliant, confident and resourceful. They will be empowered to overcome obstacles, knowing that they have the capacity and ability to directly influence and improve their performance and success.
I have always had a strong desire to help people be successful, my main driver is to enable others to be able to perform at their very best. It's so rewarding and fulfilling when, together, we identify specific actions to take and feel the excitement afterwards to have been able to discover a solution. This desire to help others who are seeking results can be very gratifying and is what motivates me to be able to provide guidance and encouragement for those seeking to grow and achieve success.
My core mission is to empower others to realize they have greater capacity to improve their performance and can directly influence much more in their positions than they are aware of.
Through our programs, I can offer unwavering dedication to emboldening staff, leaders, and executives to succeed by helping them with self-discovery, heightened self-awareness and being more self-reflective. I can help coach individuals and teams to become more self-reliant and to be able to identify points of influence that they can control to better produce results and have predictable success.
We achieve results together by leveraging specific behaviors and actions that we can identify and then manipulate. These attributes are focused on interpersonal skills and how one can interact and engage with customers, leveraging being relatable, valuable, meaningful, and personable.
Sales teams and other frontline staff face great resistance when they need to drive company growth. In order to better succeed and achieve their goals, reps and team leaders need to effectively connect with their customers, develop skills to better plan, follow up, and organize their abilities to better control that success.
Embolden. Enable. Empower. Elevate.
I promote success through live & virtual programs that involve facilitated training and workshops. They include a variety of targeted and specific learning activities which are relatable and relevant.
Whether for sales consultants, team managers, or company executives, these programs are customized, interactive, and engaging.
About Thomas Passalacqua
EDUCATION
Certified Executive Coach- Center for Executive Coaching: 2025
Sales Enablement Professional Certification & HubSpot Sales Enablement Certification: 2024
Master's of Science in Education- Hofstra University: 2011
Bachelor's of Science in Education- Hofstra University: 2008
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Director of Business Development
The Smilist Management Inc., Great Neck, NY | (10/2021 – Present)
Leader in M&A Growth - Currently leading business development and marketing strategy for a multi-million-dollar healthcare organization, bringing a strategic lens to every client engagement.
Sourced 70+ new acquisitions totaling $300M+ in revenue through sales & marketing initiatives.
Participated in Industry Buy-Side panel discussion at national conference.
Dental Sales Consultant
VOCO America Inc., New York, NY | (2016 – 2021)
Award-winning sales performer- recognized with President’s Club honors for consistently exceeding targets: 2018, 2019, 2020. Exceeded 100% of goals with $100k+ overall growth and $50k+ in new products.
Sales Leadership and Peer Mentoring - Trained and mentored peers in sales best practices, and coach for sales teams. Hosted company-wide training courses and presented at national sales meetings on sales strategy.
Teaching Experience | (2009 – 2016) New York, NY
The Academy Charter Middle School
Explore Schools Charter Network
Success Academy Charter Network
Deep Foundation in Education & Facilitation- Began career as a founding teacher and program designer bringing a powerful ability to simplify complex ideas and engage diverse learners.
I have been fortunate to excel in the various roles I have had throughout my career by abiding by the core principles of effective learning, strong communication, connecting with others, and consistency. It is among these core attributes, and others, where I have crafted my leadership development programs and now deliver them to other professionals to ensure their success. Being self-reflective, intentional and authentic, consistent, and diligent I was able to thrive in all of these positions. I now crafted sales training, leadership development, and executive coaching services where I apply and teach others to be as successful as they aim to be.
SKILLS & EXPERTISE
Business Development
Sales & Marketing Strategy
Customer Engagement
Sales Enablement
Team Leadership & Mentoring
Content Creation & Development
Staff & Project Management
Program Development
Business Development
Sales & Marketing Strategy
Customer Engagement
Sales Enablement