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Kristen Bentley

Kristen is a gentle leader and coach with surprising strength, tenacity and compassionate insight. She creates energizing conversation to push the limits of what people, families, organizations and communities think they know. Applying critical thinking to individual, societal and systemic assumptions and conditioning is something that Kristen believes is critical for personal change & the change and transformation required for our world.

After owning and operating a successful Optometry business for 16 years, married for 23 and raising 3 boys, she recognized that success on paper was and is not all that it is chalked up to be. This realization has sent her on a trajectory of personal learning and discovery that conveniently and transformatively collided with the realization that her own personal growth, as a white cis-gendered heterosexual educated middle-class female with the resulting power and privilege, cannot be separated from the social and collective systems and structures that have been created throughout history.

She firmly believes that the cycles of socialization* that have created our internalized thought patterns and expected ways of being in society (that, for many of us, get to a point where they become life-diminishing and not aligned with the truth of who we are) are the same cycles that have created oppressive patterns (like racism, colourism, heterosexism, ableism, etc.) in society. She also firmly believes that interrupting these cycles with deep awareness and action, that breaks the status quo, is leadership of the future - leadership that will serve one's whole life and the whole of life.

Now an International Facilitator/Trainer and Faculty for the largest, global in-person coach training school, The Co-Active Training Institute, and owner of her own boutique Coaching and Leadership company, Kristen is particularly passionate about working with people that decide that it is their responsibility to create the future success of their business, families, communities and world.

She is committed to an integrative, inclusive, equitable and humble approach in her work to leave a footprint of transformational change that is deep, authentic, relevant, innovative, just, ever-evolving and open to further growth. Her work is deeply inspired and influenced by several bodies of work and thought leaders in the industries and ideologies of coaching, leadership, human behaviour & development and social change & justice. She is deeply grateful to reside and work on the beautiful land of the Anishnaabeg people and is focused on moving forward in the spirit of reconciliation and respect and continuing to learn what that means.

Kristen's clients value the combination of her soft and yet direct approach in her coaching and training. Her clients come from a range of identities, countries, cultures, histories and choices around how they want to live their life. What they have in common is a desire to intentionally leave a footprint and legacy that is important to them in all key areas of their life and to really "be the change they wish to see in the world"** where their inner growth and liberation is inextricably connected to collective growth and liberation.

*Bobbie Harro/Desiree Adaway

**Mahatma Gandhi