I coach passionate and creative people who are stuck in their careers and hungry to move forward.
How does coaching work?
We meet on video chat or on the phone, usually twice a month for three months.
In the intake process, you reflect on your work and your aspirations and also what drives you and what gets in your way.
We then build a plan for the arc of coaching. We identify quick wins you can achieve in the short term—like implementing marketing ideas you’ve had on the back burner or having a hard conversation with a colleague—and also bigger projects or challenges you want to tackle, from working toward a promotion to reinvigorating your approach to your creative practice.
Then you work the plan. If we do our job right, your goals will be out of your comfort zone, so you’ll have thrilling successes along with some thrilling failures. We’ll process your experiences together as our learning laboratory, using tools and approaches from my years of experience and training as a coach. I will ask you to use your intuition and your body as a source of information along with your intellect. You’ll finish the arc of coaching with concrete outcomes (like new clients or new collaborators or new work in your portfolio) and deeper resilience and clarity for your work.
Coaching is not therapy: we don’t work on diagnoses or recovery, though you may find the process healing.
Coaching is not consulting: you draw on your own resources to determine what to do. I help you dream big and follow through.
Who does it?
My clients are passionate, creative, and sensitive. They are usually artists or educators and involved with community building or social justice—like the graduate students I mentor at the CUNY SPS MA in Applied Theatre. I work with people at different stages in their careers, from tenured professors and executives to college students and artists working toward their first solo show.
People who work with me often want more freedom around gender, too. I work with queer and gender non-conforming people, women, and men on integrating their identities in their careers; being femme and stepping into power and leadership; and also cultivating vulnerability and intimacy with men. Gender is a passion of mine, and I take inspiration and energy from my community work with Man Question on challenging toxic masculinity.
Addressing racism, classism, immigration issues, and ableism are passions of mine as well. I’m white and I’m from a comfortable middle-class US background, and I’m able bodied with minor dyslexia, so my walk in life is on the privileged side of those streets. That said, I am ready to take the lead in exploring those facets of identity with clients who want to jump in.
What are your qualifications?
I am a graduate of Leadership That Work’s Coaching for Transformation program, I am a certified group coach, and I am an Professional Certified Coach with the International Coach Federation. I have over 1800 hours of coaching experience.
I am a Premier Fellow Coach at BetterUp, where I coach engineers, frontline workers, managers, and executives on developing as whole people and aligning their work with their values, in Fortune 500 companies and beyond. I am consistently among the highest-rated coaches on the platform.
I have a Master’s Degree in Applied Theatre from the City University of New York School of Professional Studies, where I am a faculty member and where I served as Assistant Director for three years.
I am co-founder of Man Question, which I ran for nine years. We addressed toxic masculinity through theatre-based workshops and the annual New Masculinities Festival. We worked with college students, inmates, LGBTQIA+ community groups, men’s groups, and mental health professionals.
Photo: Azmi Mert Erdem
“I feel like years’ worth of emotional work was sped up into a short six months, and I came out on the other end with so much more clarity and confidence. Michael is sensitive and empathetic, and made the coaching sessions feel like a safe space for me to explore these inner parts of myself in ways that were sometimes shocking and profoundly revealing. Before this experience, I didn’t even really know what life coaching was, but now I would strongly recommend it to anyone who feels like they need support (we all do!).”
“Michael coached me and I loved it! Reach out to him. He’s intuitive, affirming and even a bit bossy when I needed it.”
“Michael, you trained me to be a good ally for myself. You mirrored back to me a lot of good things that I do. I’m not run by being reactive now—I’m planning ahead. I’m standing in my power.”
