Don't go it alone...

Find an Expert Collaborator

Make the most out of your sabbatical by enlisting expert help.

We have curated and collaborated with a variety of experts, from licensed therapists and experienced coaches, to travel planners and alumni mentors with ideas and inspiration for your time off.

Find someone that can help you find your way here.

Gena Chieco

Professional Coach

Gena Chieco

Gena is a Professional Coach specializing in guiding clients through navigating change and using the alchemy of liminal phases to launch more fulfilling personal and professional chapters.
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Gena Chieco

Gena’s passion is in serving as a guide for personal and professional transformations through empowering clients with tools for navigating change, gaining clarity of purpose, facing fears with compassion, aligning with intuition, identifying strengths, and maximizing potential. 

In 2018, carrying a case of wanderlust formed years earlier during a trip around the world and facing burnout, Gena quit her job and embarked on a transformational travel sabbatical that led her to change her life and her career. Gena completed the Martha Beck Institute training program during her sabbatical and launched her coaching business in 2019. Lessons learned from both the challenges and opportunities for growth inherent in sabbaticals influence her approach to coaching.

In her first career as a lawyer, Gena served both terms of the Obama Administration as a right-hand to principals at the highest levels of government, including at the White House, and went on to work for a cleantech startup as General Counsel and Chief of Staff to the CEO. 

When not immersing herself in her coaching work, Gena is plotting travel adventures, hiking, running, biking, writing, reading, or eating her way through Los Angeles, where she currently resides. 

Request a Call with Gena

www.genachieco.com

Russell Woo

Corporate Policy Expert

Russell Woo

Russell specializes in helping individuals and companies navigate sabbaticals - from corporate policy design to individuals requesting, transitioning, and returning from extended leave.
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Russell Woo

Spending half of his time as a management consultant and half as a performing artist, Russell believes wholeheartedly in the power of sabbaticals and in alternative working structures. 

In his corporate work, he specializes in growth and digital transformations, especially focused on the impact of talent and training on the sustainability of long-term implementation. As an artist, Russell seeks to tell stories across several media, including classical piano, contemporary dance, and aerial circus arts.

Having personally benefited from sabbatical and flexible working policies in his own career, Russell is passionate about applying experience design principles to build customized working strategies for corporate environments. He has experience in strategizing and implementing talent initiatives across several clients, both through his work as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company and as an independent consultant.

Request a Call with Russell

www.russellwoo.com/

Gina Gregory

Licensed Therapist

Gina Gregory

Gina is a licensed psychotherapist that specializes in working with adults in the midst of large life changes.
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Gina Gregory

My name is Gina Gregory and I am a licensed psychotherapist that specializes in working with adults in the midst of large life changes. I support individuals in gaining clarity about what is most important to them, in developing coping skills that can address transition-related anxieties, and in helping them motivate to create the life they most want to live. 

As someone who has personally experienced a sabbatical I deeply understand the value this time can bring to one's life. I am thus passionate about supporting people in making the most of this experience—whatever that path may look like—and utilize the therapeutic tools of mindfulness, self-compassion, values-based goal setting, and motivational interviewing, in particular, to help individuals navigate change.

Request a Call with Gina

www.ginagregorylcsw.com/

Patty First

Certified Coach

Patty First

Patty is an executive coach who specializes in using positive psychology to help organizations — and the people who work at them — thrive.
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Patty First

Patty is an executive coach who specializes in using positive psychology to help organizations — and the people who work at them — thrive. A lawyer and an advocate for progressive causes for much of her career, Patty’s own journey facing anxiety and burnout means she intimately understands the struggles and challenges people at organizations face.

With Patty as your coach, you’ll have access to an objective, empathic listener, adviser, and guide. You’ll work together to take you from stuck to thriving.

Request a Call with Patty

www.pattyfirst.com/

Lyndall Farley

Coach and Consultant

Lyndall Farley

Lyndall is an experienced Sabbatical Coach and Consultant helping people get the most out of their sabbatical.
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Lyndall Farley

Lyndall’s coaching approach is tailored to each individual, supporting them as they plan their sabbatical, collect new perspectives and use the experience as a catalyst for change when they return. Lyndall also works with companies setting up sabbatical programs to boost employee wellbeing providing workshops, guidance, and coaching.

Lyndall is a true believer in the power of sabbaticals. She has taken 11 sabbaticals (solo and with her family) and has guided hundreds of people on their sabbatical journeys.

Request a Call with Lyndall

www.beyondabreak.com/

Mimi Lichtenstein

Custom Travel Advisor and Certified Coach

Mimi Lichtenstein

Mimi is an award-winning custom travel advisor with a focus on longer duration, adventurous, life-changing trips for high-performing individuals and their families who understand that time is their most precious resource.
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Mimi Lichtenstein

Heavily informed by her own three sabbaticals including a year-long family sabbatical in Madrid, Mimi’s approach is infused with her never-ending passion for travel and cultural exploration.  A certified life coach and former finance professional, she brings a uniquely personal and practical approach to sabbatical exploration, planning and execution, covering both big goals as well as the critical details upon which the success of time abroad can turn (e.g., visas, relocation/housing, schooling, formation of social networks, new skills acquisition).  

 

As an essential part of the planning process, Mimi explores the impetus for the sabbatical with her clients – a new challenge, cultural immersion, writing a book, or simply recharging their batteries – and helps to shape the trip around the achievement of those goals.  Mimi brings her coaching skills to bear to help clients to find solutions to the obstacles which may stand in the way of a successful sabbatical, and also to provide support when inevitable bumps occur along the way. Ultimately, Mimi seeks to inspire and help others plan their own life changing experiences abroad.

Request a Call with Mimi

Truvay Travel

Katrina McGhee

Certified Coach

Katrina McGhee

Katrina McGhee is a Career Break and Sabbatical Expert. She helps mid-career professionals create more fulfilling lives by designing bold and transformational life breaks.
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Katrina McGhee

As a certified life coach with an MBA, Katrina helps mid-career professionals create happier, more fulfilling lives by designing bold and transformational life breaks.

Informed by her own intrepid and successful career break, Katrina’s RSVP Framework guides her clients as they create their life-altering career break experiences. They return from their breaks recharged, inspired, happily-employed and forever changed. On their time off, her 50+ clients have traveled the world, launched a business, changed careers and more.

Katrina is an enthusiastic world traveler and digital nomad. Her advice on career breaks, money, and travel has been shared across various outlets including Forbes, Smarter Travel, Thrive Global, and Yahoo.

Request a Call with Katrina

Tash Wilder

Certified Coach

Tash Wilder

I am passionate about fostering a warm and trusting coaching experience where clients are equipped to harness their innate strengths to achieve desired (as well as delightfully unexpected!) outcomes.
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Tash Wilder

Many streams of my life converged on this sweet spot of coaching people during their sabbatical journeys, including a transformative year long sabbatical during which I focused on screenwriting and questions of personal identity. I have spent 15 years supporting executives, emerging leaders, and individuals across all walks of life navigate change, achieve greater alignment, and find more ease and joy in their lives. 

Prior to launching Wilder Integral Coaching, I served as the Director of Coaching at Paradigm, a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategy firm, where I also facilitated workshops on unconscious bias, allyship, anti-racism, and transgender inclusion in the workplace.

My coaching is informed by a PhD in Positive Organizational Psychology and International Coaching Federation (ICF) and Integral Coaching certifications, as well as 30 years of mindfulness practice. I believe that coaching is as much an art as it is a science, and I draw on both research and intuition to meet each client where they are at.

Request a Call with Tash

Hire an Expert Sabbatical Coach