About Koren
High performance was never about born talent.
Talent is built.
What builds it is identity, culture, practice + the pursuit of mastery, and having someone in your corner asking the right questions: challenging you to see what you can't see on your own + to do what you may already know but are avoiding.
That was true when I coached athletes.
It is still true for the leaders I coach today.
My work started in the water.
I have spent more than three decades in the work of high performance + leadership development: coaching people, developing leaders, building teams, leading organizations + building communities, while doing the work of leadership myself.
I was an NCAA national champion swimmer + UC Davis Cal Aggie Athletics Hall of Fame inductee.
Then I became a coach.
For 11 years, I was the head swim + water polo coach at Sacramento City College, where I developed 16 All-Americans + two state champions and built teams that earned the state's top academic award nine times.
Coaching taught me that talent alone was never enough.
The athletes who grew, performed + became leaders practiced. They learned to receive feedback without allowing it to take them down. They developed the ability to have hard conversations, navigate disappointment, trust themselves + return to the work again and again.
They cultivated mastery.
And I learned the power of having a coach in your corner who can see what you can't see, ask the questions you may not be asking yourself + challenge you to do what you already know but may be avoiding.
Leadership is a way of being, not a title.
For over 20 years, I have led the Davis AquaMonsters, a swim team + community built around a simple philosophy:
Every Monster Matters.
We measure success through growth, skill + courage, not just winning.
That philosophy has shaped how I think about leadership.
You don't become a leader when someone gives you the title.
Leadership is how you communicate.
How you give feedback + how you receive it.
How you make decisions when there isn't a perfect answer.
How you navigate courageous conversations.
How you respond when something doesn't go according to plan.
How you stay in relationship with yourself while doing hard, high-stakes work.
Leadership is a practice.
You get to be the Leader of Your Life.
In 2009, my coaching work moved beyond the pool deck.
I began coaching people to become the Leader of Your Life.
The work has evolved over the years as I have evolved, and as the leaders I coach have taken on greater responsibility, built businesses, led organizations + navigated increasingly complex decisions.
Today, I am an executive leadership coach + strategic advisor to high-performing leaders, including entrepreneurs, founders + executives.
My work sits at the intersection of leadership, strategy + human performance.
I help leaders cultivate mastery in how they communicate, give feedback, receive feedback without it taking them down, have courageous conversations up + down the organization and outside it, make decisions, cultivate self-trust + develop their own presence as a leader.
I am not here to give you a formula for how a leader is supposed to show up.
I am in your corner to ask the right questions.
To challenge you to see what you can't see on your own.
To notice the patterns that may be shaping your decisions.
To challenge you to do what you may already know but are avoiding.
And to help you cultivate the practices + mastery to lead as yourself.
The work I do today.
I work privately with high-performing leaders through executive leadership coaching + strategic advising, serving as a trusted partner in the complexity of leadership, business + life.
For leaders who need dedicated space to step out of the day-to-day + get clear on what is next, I created The Leadership Reset, a private two-day executive intensive.
I also partner with organizations on leadership development. I am a Certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator, based on the research of Dr. Brené Brown.
Since 2006, How She Really Does It has been my platform for conversations about what it really takes to lead, grow + create a meaningful life. The podcast, where inspiration + possibility meet, is now back with new episodes.
Across all of this work, the belief at the heart of what I do has remained the same:
You get to be the Leader of Your Life.
