I empower coaches to stand in their power.

Whether you are seeking ACC or PCC certification, deepening your reflective practice, seeking feedback on your coaching sessions, honing your intercultural tools, or enhancing your ICF Coaching Competencies, I will stand with you as you step fully into your power as coach.

Mentor Coaches

• ICF Credentialing (ACC, PCC)

• Co-Active (CPCC)

• Intercultural Coach (CoF tools, expat coaches)

• PQ® Coach (PQ® Powered Coaching tools)

 “In our delightful conversation, fresh from time digging in her garden, Karen—who has been coaching for several decades—share her tips and tools...” - 12 April 2024, DG McCullough

About me

I started in the mid 90s as an external coach with a small practice. I’ve been an external… then internal… now back to external coach, going from a 6-figure salary in an internal executive coach role, to $0 as an external coach, rebuilding my practice from scratch after Covid and 10 years physically working in the Middle East.

I’ll share my journey—both the struggles and triumphs with each of these various roles, always with the intention of transforming you, my client, at the center of my focus.

How I became a Mentor Coach

At 65 I am really leaning into my 3 main strengths I’ve honed over 45 years of a non-traditional career trajectory:

Trainer. First, as a trainer – a career I pivoted to after becoming a certified public-school teacher, realizing that my real gifts were distilling complex concepts into easy-to-understand and easy-to-apply actions to adult learners. I developed various types of training as both an instructional designer and stand-up trainer in my early 20s, first with a large NGO, then a series of jobs and contracts with law enforcement, legal interns in a prosecutor’s office, community advocates, non-profit agencies, small businesses, “on-the-job” (OTJ) performance improvement coach with leaders in Fortune 500 companies across North America (1995) before moving into designing & facilitating leadership mandatory training topics required by government agencies, to building leadership competency trainings across corporations like Bank of America, Starbucks, Microsoft, and Saudi Aramco, joining and taking on leadership roles with professional L&D and OD associations like ATD and PNODN. I deepened my L&D expertise with decades of professional facilitation training, speaking gigs across North America and the MENA region, to where I am today:  weaving key concepts from various coaching modalities into your professional and personal life as a coach that truly sticks. At my core, I am a PQ® Powered Coach, because what I have learned over the decades—first with myself—and then with my clients: we have to address “what gets in our way.” The PQ® OS does just that.

Transformational and long lasting. So you can stand in your own power as a coach.

Coach. I naturally gravitated to coaching in the mid 1990’s—taking every coaching course I could get my hands on, working “first on me” before I applied the principles, tools, and insight with clients.  And that was a decade prior to starting my professionally trained, certified, and credentialed coach journey through the Co-Active Training Institute (CTI) resulting in becoming credentialed by the ICF, an experience that made me appreciate ever more the rigor, practice, and self-reflection that a credentialed program demands.  I achieved my ACC in 2017 and 6 months later achieved PCC in 2018.  I have over 1500 hours of coach training, and I continue in my 60’s to still “sharpen my saw,” going deeper with my own practice as “self as instrument” continually engaging with a mentor and supervisor coach. “Every good coach has a coach.”

Mentor. Allows me to bring these 2 circles together and really support, champion, and celebrate you as the coach you know you can truly be—slaying all those saboteur thoughts and negative voices that hold you back, so you can really step into your power and purpose, make coaching a successful career, in whatever business model best supports you.  Internal coach?  External coach? 1:1 Coach? Group Coach? Serving individuals? Organisations?  

I come from a place of abundance: we can never have too many coaches out in the world!  The world needs ALL of us!  We all have something to offer our clients: our unique, inherent wisdom and experience that we lean into, with whichever coaching model you bring to your profession.  Stand in your power.

So as an ICF Registered Mentor Coach to other coaches—I’ll wear different hats during your coaching journey with me: coach, trainer, mentor. I would love to be part of your journey to be the best coach you can be—for yourself first; then your clients.

My PQ® Journey:

As a PQ® Powered coach, I was an early adapter--one of the PQ® Pioneers (Cohort 2) enrolling into Shirzad’s Chamine’s Coach Grant program back in May 2020 during lockdown in Oman.  Having been introduced to his book Positive Intelligence in 2016 at the start of my CTI journey, I used the saboteur assessment and applied various techniques he describes in his NYTs best-selling book with my internal clients (senior leaders, emerging leaders, and women leaders at Saudi Aramco) in Saudi Arabia.

Then I took this assessment, knowledge and application to Oman, where I was hired to set up the first internal executive coaching office in a key industry. The PQ® Operating System (OS) was a game-changer!  When the PQ® App was offered to coaches as a tool to use with leadership and executive clients, weaving all the concepts, tools and principles of the PQ® OS in May 2020, I launched my own external coaching company following two successful leadership and executive coaching assignments—Saudi Aramco and Orpic (now OQ)—making a steady 6-figure salary as a coach.  Yes, as a coach.

Became a Certified PQ® Coach (CPQC) (2022)

Completed Cohort #2 of PQ® Mastery (2022-2023)

Past member of the PQ® Model Pilot Group led by Jeff Staggs, MCC, head of PQ® Coaching Curriculum, that tested, practiced, and provided feedback on the development of material for the PQ® Powered Life Cycle: coaching model, saboteur discovery session debrief, renew session (2024)

Approved to join the inaugural PQ Coach Pro Review for Teams & Organisations (formerly B2B) for January & February 2025, which limited their acceptance to 100 PQ coaches.

Currently an active contributor in our PQ® coaching community.

Over decades in various roles, I bring experience and many lessons learned with this Skills Inventory listed here; and, first and foremost, engaging in a deep reflective practice with “self as instrument” is what makes me the coach that I am today, standing in my own power.  My own mindfulness, mental fitness, PQ® practice—4.5 years and counting—with numerous PQ® coaches, mentors, and guides as part of my journey, and is what I bring to our mentor coaching relationship.

PQ® is my tribe. PQ® is my coaching community that supports me, challenges me, and champions me.  Let me, as your mentor coach, support, challenge and champion YOU along your coaching journey, so you too, can stand in your power as coach.

How we will work together:

• 1:1 Mentor coaching

• Mastermind groups

• Group Mentor sessions

As an ICF Registered Mentor Coach, PQ® Powered Coach, Co-Active Coach, ORSC-trained coach, Action Learning Trained Coach, Intercultural Coach -- who asks you powerful questions drawing out the inherent wisdom already inside you, I will inspire, empower, and challenge you to take your next step. And then the next step after that … continuing your growth of true transformation while addressing the challenges that get in your way of standing in your power. As you explore coaching as a profession.  As your life’s purpose.  Within a sustainable business model that supports you at the level you desire.

This is the intersection of the 3 complimentary modes between pure coaching, training and mentoring, that I bring as a Mentor Coach, to ensure your get the results you seek, as you apply the neuroscience of “rewiring your brain” to bring out the underlying strengths as your authentic self—guiding you to coach from your Sage-essence, while truly embodying the ICF core coaching competencies.

Listen to ICF Competency #5 Podcast: Maintains Presence

 “In our delightful conversation, fresh from time digging in her garden, Karen—who has been coaching for several decades—share her tips and tools...” - April 12, 2024, DG McCullough

If YOU are ready to tap into your positive Sage regions of your brain, stop the hijacking of your saboteurs and stand in your power as the coach you were meant to me, let's talk.
https://schedulewithcoachkaren.as.me/schedule/d53bd9a3/appointment/39992022/calendar/5225480