Sara L.Orem, Ph.D. has twenty years of management experience and fifteen years management consulting in and to major financial services companies in the U. S., Britain and Australia.

While most of her career has been spent in banks, insurance companies and brokerage firms, she has a strong affiliation for, and has had multiple consulting relationships with major non-profits. In both her corporate and non-profit work Sara has consulted to a full-spectrum of organizational roles from operations managers to boards of directors. This work has spanned strategic planning, diversity management, team collaboration, and executive coaching. Her corporate roles focused on leadership development.

Her consulting work has focused most recently on team and individual coaching for improved satisfaction and performance. She is qualified to interpret, has presented workshops, and published papers about the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. She is also co-author of the daily meditation book, Living Simply (1994, Health Communications).

Sara completed her doctoral work in the inter-disciplinary program in Human and Organization Systems at Fielding Graduate University where her dissertation was focused on transformative learning in interpersonal conflict.

In addition to coaching, Sara teaches both an advanced coaching course and doctoral level management courses for Capella University in Minneapolis. She has presented her research at the national conferences of the International Coach Federation (2004, 2005), the Transformational Learning Conference (2003), and the Organization Development Network (2003).

Her current focus is on the development and use of positive methods including Appreciative Inquiry in coaching and group processes. She, Jackie Binkert, and Ann Clancy, have co-authored a book entitled Appreciative Coaching: A Positive Process for Change published in early 2007 by Jossey-Bass. Since its publication, Appreciative Coaching has garnered positive attention from the International Coach Federation (Sara did a continuing education webinar for them in early 2008) and the Conference Board (Sara and Kathy Cramer of the Cramer Institute presented joint work at the 2008 Coaching Conference and to the Executive Coaching Council).  Appreciative Coaching describes in detail the method Sara has developed for her coaching practice which serves women and men looking at self-started transitions.

About the symbol of the Lotus

I have used the lotus as a symbol of my company for the last seven years, since my first visit to China. What this symbol means to me may not be what the symbol means commonly in our culture. It does not signify yoga or eastern philosophy to me, as the lotus often does. What I learned from our guide in China, while passing miles of lotus fields on our way to the mountains where Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was filmed, was this.

The Chinese use every bit of the lotus plant in their culture. They use the flower in arrangements, in water gardens and as décor and design, the bud and the pod as food, and the stem and root as fiber for strong rope. It is this sense of using up the entire plant, of fully spending the resource that speaks to me. I want to use myself fully in my practice, in my writing, and in my interaction with clients. I also want to enable them to fully use themselves.