About us
The succession planning partnership for retirement success
Succession planning is a critical element of a firm’s talent management strategy and more importantly, the key to ensuring the wellbeing of your team as they prepare for retirement. Zelinka Parsons is the experienced partner you need to help plan a successful path forward — for everyone.
Discovering a purpose
When deciding to transition from law to a new professional endeavor, Elizabeth Zelinka encountered a lack of resources and support to navigate this significant change. While she got to work identifying, learning and implementing her own strategies for the next phase of her life, she recognized that her purpose and passion was to help other professionals do the same.
Setting a precedent
Zelinka Parsons was established to address a significant gap in professionals’ approach to succession planning and retirement — one that affects the prosperity of firms, the continuity of client relationships and the wellbeing of the individuals retiring. Co-founders Elizabeth Zelinka and David Parsons, alongside a growing team of executive coaches at their affiliated company, Encoraco, have helped hundreds of AMLaw 50 firm partners, business owners and executives transition into meaningful lives after retirement, while supporting firms and businesses in their continued prosperity.
Our clients embrace life
Our Guiding Principles
Maintaining a standard of excellence in all we do.
Our elite programs have been developed by lawyers, for other intense career professionals to meet the needs and exacting expectations of professional services firms and their partners. And they're implemented by a highly trained team who has been carefully chosen for their experience and expertise to deliver.
Operating with integrity in all aspects of our business.
You and your team will know exactly what to expect from our programs — the why, what and how. The transparency in our business and the commitment shown by our coach facilitators ensures your partners feel understood, supported and empowered.
Centering the work we do around people first.
Relationships are at the heart of everything we do. They're the reason the world's leading law and professional services firms continue to trust us with their people, and the reason their partners feel comfortable and confident taking this important journey with us.
Meet the Zelinka Parsons founders.
Elizabeth Zelinka
Elizabeth Zelinka has worked with law firms and individual lawyers in the areas of professional development and transition for more than 15 years. After a rewarding legal career at Milbank, she designed the methodologies underlying programs provided by Zelinka Parsons, which have been validated by industry experts and satisfied participants.
Elizabeth works alongside her husband David Parsons to co-facilitate programs, conduct customized workshops for firms and help leaders to design effective frameworks for succession planning. Elizabeth is a published author, an active member of her community, and a Board Certified Coach. She received her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, magna cum laude, and her B.A. in Economics and Political Science, summa cum laude, from James Madison University.
As Les Brown says, “you can't see the picture when you're in the frame.” We help people get out of their own frames. Then they see themselves and what they want so much more clearly.
David Parsons
David Parsons is a business leader and entrepreneur with a history of helping successful people succeed in new spaces. Throughout his career, he has worked with executives in real estate development, management consulting, and publishing to develop strategies and optimize business performance.
David now works with his partner and spouse, Elizabeth Zelinka, to offer customized talent solutions to AmLaw 50 firms and other businesses.
Born in Zimbabwe and raised in South Africa, David graduated college in the US and worked in Japan for five years as a key liaison on large infrastructure projects for trading company Itochu Corporation. Fluent in four languages, he is a Board Certified Coach who received his Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Colorado College.
As a business consultant with project management expertise, I come at this work from a completely different perspective, which creates lots of fresh ideas and new ways of looking at things.