Sonya partners with high-achieving, mission-driven leaders at the top of their organizations to help increase both their capacity and their impact in sustainable ways. She believes that the protective mechanisms that have served her clients so well in moving up the ladder are often the very things that hold them back as they take on organization-wide leadership positions. She helps them explore and recognize the value in these safeguards, while empowering her clients to dial them back enough to allow a shift from reactivity, crisis management, and control to a more collaborative, innovative, and visionary form of leadership. 

 

Sonya also loves working with teams and emerging leaders, combining assessments and coaching to help these clients move beyond technical skill development to adaptive, co-creative change. She works with each member and/or the collective group to optimize the strengths each brings to the team, improve communication, diffuse mistrust, create buy-in for the team’s and the organization’s collective goals and values, and increase efficiency and productivity.

 

Sonya's coaching is deeply influenced by her twenty plus years as an appellate attorney, when she served as counsel in matters before the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous other appellate courts on behalf of individuals and institutions such as the American Bar Association, Brennan Center for Justice, Constitution Project, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. By working to forge partnerships in the legal community to achieve systemic impact in the field, she developed a collaborative, creative approach to her leadership that she brings to her work as a coach in both the corporate and nonprofit sectors. Having been through a significant career transition herself, Sonya loves working with clients who are navigating their own transitions, whether to a new level at the same organization, a new organization, a completely new field, or retirement. 

 

Sonya is the Founder and Principal of Affinity Coaching, LLC and an ACC-certified member of the International Coaching Federation. She holds a certificate in Leadership Coaching from Georgetown University’s Institute for Transformational Leadership. She is certified to administer The Leadership Circle Profile™ 360º Assessment, the Hogan Personality Inventory, the Coaching Mindset Index, and the Team Effectiveness Survey. She is also an Immunity to Change™ and Internal Family Systems practitioner. For engagements that involve teams or multiple leaders in the same organization, Sonya collaborates with a cohort of hand-picked leadership coaches who provide unique skillsets and ensure conflict-free coaching. 

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Her representative clients/sponsors include: Kaiser Permanente, Hewlett-Packard, IMA Financial Group, The Sundance Institute, the United Way of the Greater Triangle, and University of Florida’s Collaboratory for Inclusive Entrepreneurship.

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Sonya earned a B.A. in Political Science cum laude from Stanford University and a J.D. from New York University School of Law. She has been named one of Florida’s “Legal Elite” attorneys in appellate law by Florida Trend Magazine.