Executive Coach & Strategic Advisor
Live and work with more clarity, effectiveness, and ease.
Maybe some big unknowns are making it hard to move. Perhaps you want more of your work to feel alive and distinctly yours, or you want to use your power more deliberately, or get sharper at a part of leadership you care about.
Sometimes you know exactly what to work on and have already picked the focus for our first session. Sometimes you only know you need a thinking partner to figure out where to start.
I help ambitious people do work that matters without sacrificing themselves for the cause.
Book time to talk →Coaching
1:1 coaching
One-to-one work on the questions, patterns, and practices shaping how you show up.
Our sessions are a learning lab for inquiry and practice. We might work through a difficult decision, prepare for a consequential conversation, experiment with a different way of delegating, or celebrate your latest breakthrough.
The work is useful right away and builds capacity for whatever comes next.
Explore 1:1 coaching →Consulting
Organizational consulting
Focused support for a specific organizational question, challenge, or piece of work.
We might clarify strategic priorities, facilitate a board or leadership-team conversation, design a learning experience, strengthen a funding or growth strategy, or shape a service, product, or way of working.
We define the question, scope, and useful outputs together.
Explore organizational consulting →This six-domain framework is a map for where to focus attention.
Select a domain and consider its guiding question.
“Sonya has a rare ability to see the field clearly, ask the question underneath the question, and help you figure out what to do next.”Founder/CEO & Author, Minnesota
Experience
I bring two decades of experience leading teams, building organizations, developing revenue and service models, advising founders and executives, and helping organizations navigate growth and change.
That experience helps me recognize when a question is about judgment, strategy, people, structure, practice, or some combination of them.
“Sonya's coaching helped me navigate some of my life's most complex and difficult moments. Together, we have designed practical solutions to challenges that seemed insurmountable at the beginning of our journey.”Licensed Professional Counselor, LPC, CRC, MA, Oregon
We'll talk about what you want to change, strengthen, understand, or make easier, and whether working together makes sense.
Book time to talk →About
For two decades, I've helped people and organizations learn their way through complexity.
At five, I knew I wanted to be a teacher. So I did. I taught high school English, then took my passion for education beyond the classroom to state and national organizations focused on helping meaningful learning happen.
That path forced me to learn about, and fall in love with many parts of, running and growing organizations. I led teams, scaled organizations, developed revenue and partnership strategies, traveled too much, spoke at conferences, and advised founders and executives at start-ups and mission-driven organizations.
Across those settings, the work I'm best at has stayed remarkably consistent: stay curious about what's needed, bring people together, learn from data (excellent listening provides a lot of great data, by the way), find patterns in complexity, and make magic happen in community.
Educator
I am a third-generation educator. My grandmother was an elementary school principal in Los Angeles, my mother a high school math and science teacher, and my younger brother is a school psychologist.
With education in my DNA, I am always designing for learning and growth. I help people make meaning, question assumptions, apply what they learn, and build their own capacity.
Builder
I'm comfortable in ambiguity and like turning it into something useful. I've built roles, teams, strategies, products, and ways of working that did not exist before.
I bring that builder instinct to clients, too. Sometimes I help build the thing. Often, I help people learn how to build for themselves: test ideas, create structure, and keep learning as they go.
Coach
I've spent decades developing people as a manager, facilitator, advisor, and coach. I listen closely, ask candid questions, and help people make sense of what's happening, strengthen their judgment, and practice new ways of leading.
I know leadership from the inside: the responsibility, ambiguity, relationships, pressure, and possibility that come with it.
“I've turned to Sonya for coaching for years when I'm feeling stuck or facing a difficult decision. She doesn't hand me an answer. She helps me slow down, pay attention to what I already know, sort through my options, and experiment with what might be possible. I leave our sessions seeing more choices and feeling clearer and more confident about what I want to do next.”Chief Philanthropy Officer, California
I studied literature and education at Lesley University and completed executive leadership training at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. I've written for Education Week and Education Post and spoken at state and national conferences about education, equity, leadership, and the power of listening. I live in the Bay Area with my husband and two insanely curious and fun boys.
My work is grounded in a simple belief: people and organizations can learn their way through big, beautiful work that can heal, restore, and serve the greater good.
My work is grounded in a simple belief: people and organizations can learn their way through big work that can heal, restore, and serve the greater good.
Book time to talk →Approach
Coaching offers more than answers. It helps you get better at getting better.
Some of our work turns inward, tending to the relationship between you and yourself. (Watch out. You just might fall in love, if you haven't already.) We might explore your values, notice patterns in your attention, tune into signals from your body, or see an old story from a new angle.
Some turns outward, toward how you show up with others and the power you hold in different spaces. We might workshop a tricky conversation, experiment with delegating differently, or practice setting a boundary, all in service of more freedom and ease.
The six-domain framework is a simple tool. Think of it as a map with six places to explore: what matters, what shapes your judgment, where you come alive, what fuels you, how you relate to power, and where you want to get better.
Click a domain in the diagram to explore it here.
Purpose
What matters most to me and how do I want this to shape my priorities?
Purpose is about living and leading in integrity with what you care about. It asks what you want your life and leadership to serve, and the degree to which your choices are aligned.
Clarity
What is shaping my judgment, and where is my influence needed?
Clarity is the discipline of noticing what is shaping your judgment, from feedback and other people's reactions to organizational norms, incentives, and your own habitual patterns. Leaders have to take in a great deal of information without treating every signal as equally important. The work is to separate useful information from noise, recognize dynamics that can distort judgment, and decide what merits your attention, trust, and engagement.
Genius
What is uniquely mine to contribute for a more just and sustainable world?
Genius is where your strengths, instincts, energy, and experience come together in work that feels especially alive and effective.
Resourcing
What makes more of my best self available to my life and leadership?
Resourcing is about what makes more of your best self available to your life and leadership. We pay attention to what nourishes, restores, and enlivens you, as well as what may be limiting access to your wisest self.
With curiosity and experimentation rather than prescriptions:
Power
How do I recognize the power I hold, and choose how to use, share, or relinquish it?
Leadership asks us to make consequential choices without complete information and to take responsibility for what follows. Power is the capacity to recognize the authority and resources you already hold, understand how power operates around you, and use it with courage and care.
Craft
Where do I want to get better?
Leadership is a craft that gets better with intentional practice. Sometimes you are building a new capability. Sometimes you are refining something you already do well, looking for more range, fluency, expertise, or ease.
If you see yourself in any of this, I'd love to hear about it.
Book time to talk →How I Work
Coaching: an ongoing 1:1 relationship focused on growth in life and leadership, including purpose, clarity, genius, resourcing, power, and craft.
Consulting: a focused engagement around an organizational question that needs clarity, discernment, building, and action.
Regular 1:1 sessions with room to bring whatever is current: a specific decision, a pattern you're noticing, a capability you want to deepen, or how a larger role is landing. We'll set a direction at the start, use the six domains framework as a container, and the work stays responsive to your goals. Coaching is offered through a tuition-based model with monthly, quarterly, and annual terms.
Study Hall
Coaching clients get access to my Study Hall, a virtual space that I hold to help you prioritize, focus, and follow through on the things that surfaced in our sessions or for other important tasks. Sometimes you need reflection. Sometimes you need protected attention, a check-in, or a body double to help you get through that thing that's been nagging at you for too long.
Field Guides
For Fall 2026 coaching clients, I'm piloting Field Guides, a private interactive digital tool that gathers our work in one place.
The Field Guide gives us a place to carry the learning between sessions, track what you're experimenting with, and notice what changes over time.
Let's Walk Together (literally)
East Bay clients can choose to hold coaching sessions outside in Tilden, Blake Garden, along the Bay Trail, or another place that supports movement, reflection, and our session goals.
Remote clients are also encouraged to schedule sessions as walk-and-talks. Movement and time outdoors can make room for a different kind of thinking, and good coaching work need not always require another hour on a screen.
Bring me in when there's an organizational question that needs focused attention, experienced judgment, and project leadership you can count on.
Some questions need both a strategist and a coach in the room: someone attending to the work itself and to the relationships, dynamics, and people who will carry it forward.
That might include strategy and planning, team or board facilitation, learning design, funding and proposal strategy, product and user research, partnerships, or growth.
Consulting is billed hourly, which lets the work flex as needs change.
Study Groups
The organization provides the people, space, and books. I provide the learning structure, facilitation, and support for turning ideas into practice.
This isn't just a book club. It's a facilitated peer-learning environment for engaged leaders and staff who want to challenge themselves and one another to a higher standard of excellence and integrity.
Recommended format: 6 sessions, 60–90 minutes each, with 4–12 people per group. Organizations can run multiple concurrent groups based on schedule, affinity, role, or interest.
Impact with Integrity Study Group
Repair the World Without Breaking Yourself
I've used Becky Margiotta's Impact with Integrity with clients and teams since it was published in 2022 to explore alignment, responsibility, overwork, the drama triangle, and what it means to contribute from your genius.
This fall, I'm going deeper into the four pillars of integrity and studying directly with Becky in her inaugural Impact with Integrity Circle. I will bring that learning into a facilitated experience that helps teams apply the transformative ideas from the text to how they work, lead, and show up for what matters.
Playing Big Study Group
Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create, and Lead
I've worked with, worked for, and managed many talented women with ideas to voice, risks to take, difficult conversations to have, and work they wanted to pursue. I've also watched women, including myself, hold back.
Tara Mohr's Playing Big gave me useful language and practices for understanding some of what gets in the way. I'm participating in Tara's 2026–27 Facilitators Training to go deeper in the work and get better at supporting other women in owning their power.
Getting started
Every engagement starts with a conversation about what's in front of you.
We'll decide what structure makes sense, or whether I'm the right person for it. If I'm not, I'll tell you plainly.
We'll talk about coaching terms and consulting rates before we begin.
Discounts are available to:
Contact
Tell me what's in front of you. We'll talk about what you want to change, strengthen, understand, or make easier, and whether coaching or consulting makes sense.
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45-minute discovery call
Book time to talk