Melissa Maher is a Certified Professional Coach trained through the ICF-accredited Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching, where she continues to enhance her skills as an Assistant Trainer. She is also a Certified Clinical Nutritionist, a Registered Yoga Teacher, and a dedicated mindfulness and Vipassana meditation practitioner. She has completed over 500 hours of coursework toward a Holistic Health Practitioner’s license, worked for several years in the Life Coaching Department of the Anthony Robbins Company, and completed the Mindfulness Fundamentals training course through the Mindful Schools program. In addition to offering individual coaching, Melissa speaks to audiences ranging from corporations like Pfizer to yoga students and artists on wellness topics, and offers workshops that blend coaching, mindfulness, yoga, and nutrition.

Melissa’s integrative wellness background brings the principle of whole-person balance to the center of her coaching practice, whether helping a high-potential executive improve their leadership skills or helping a yogi in transition increase clarity. She places mindfulness – the practice of paying nonjudgmental attention to the present moment – at the center of her practice as a simple yet profound way to increase balance in life. When balance is present, we experience greater joy, ease, and fulfillment; and with fine-tuned awareness of our thoughts and emotions, we are better able to make choices that lead to life-affirming actions and ways of being.

While she feels deeply aligned and in love with the work she’s doing now, Melissa’s path into coaching was not a linear one. After graduating with honors from Middlebury College, she saw taking an intellectually-driven job with a steady paycheck as the only choice, because it seemed to be what everyone else was doing. After working for over four years at The Corporation for Public Broadcasting in Washington, D.C., and a stint as an Immigration Caseworker for a Congressman, Melissa realized that there’s a lot more to happiness than working a 9-5 job that sounds good on paper. Those jobs seemed like things she “should” be interested in, but her heart wasn’t in them. She was feeling drained, unfulfilled, frustrated, stagnant, and as if there had to be a more joyful way to go about life than this. At just the moment a shift was most needed, a month-long yoga teacher training program in Costa Rica synchronistically presented itself. Profoundly inspired by a new understanding that we can design the lives we want to lead and steadily step into them, Melissa returned to DC and took the leap out of the stability comfort zone. In 2006, with no plan, but with the intention to create space to allow whatever wanted to come next to emerge, she quit her job, took a soul-searching trip to South America, and her intuition (her new best friend) led her back to California. There she immersed herself in the mind-body-spirit realm through massage school, nutrition training, teaching yoga, and working at the Tony Robbins Company.

In hindsight, the dots on Melissa’s path into coaching connect perfectly logically. But early on in the journey, she could certainly have used some additional support and clarity! With profound gratitude for how tremendously life has become enriched for her through the tools of mindfulness and coaching, Melissa is passionate about sharing those tools to help others make a shift from “life’s not bad” to “life is amazing!” She offers support to those embarking on their own journey to more deeply experience joy and express their unique purpose in fulfilling ways. She is committed to helping others learn to trust their inherent wisdom, and, in doing so, lead more conscious, joyful, and satisfying lives. Melissa provides a safe, nonjudgmental environment that nurtures authentic self-exploration. With a balanced blend of intuition, compassion, and logic, she brings a light-heartedness and intelligence to her coaching that helps her clients thoughtfully acknowledge where they are today and move confidently into expanded realms of possibility from there.