The Shadow Coach™

By entering the client’s environment, she works with them in translating awareness into practice, essentially fostering the emergence of the Shadow Coach™ in the clients themselves.  Donna uses an adaptable and comprehensive approach in working with her clients, a unique structure that enables her to understand individuals and their worlds sufficiently to design coaching that shifts their developmental level. Her coaching attends to the individual, social, relational and environmental aspects of her client's ‘world’. It is an integral approach that results in the client developing a deeper, more comprehensive sense of themselves and their place in their organization and the world as a whole.  Through her unique approach, Donna works with clients to achieve individual and organizational excellence.

Principal of A Better Perspective™, Ms. Karlin has worked for almost three decades as a coach and trainer with clients in Canada, the US and abroad in the business/corporate sector, political Federal Ministries, government departments and agencies, creative designers and the medical community.

Donna is an author, international speaker and lecturer. In response to widely expressed interest to her highly successful and innovative approach to coaching, she established the School of Shadow Coaching™ to enable others to learn the practice.

Donna is a SupporTED Coach and on the team that coaches the TED.com Fellows, an executive coach with Karlin Sloan & Company, a communications and team dynamics advisor for INSPIRIT Sustainable Design and Promotion Group, and is a member of Faith Popcorn's TalentBank.

Donna is a member of the Advisory Council for The Academy of Behavioral Medicine, Counseling and Psychotherapy (IABMCP), and Past President and current Dean of the International Consortium for Coaching in Organizations (ICCO). She is a Founding Member of the Harvard Institute of Coaching Professional Association (ICPA), and a member of the Board of Advisors for The Foundation For International Leadership Coaching.

Donna’s work has been written up in Fast Company Magazine, The National Post (Financial Post), The Globe and Mail, The New York Times Business Section, The Boston Globe, Personal Success Magazine, as well as in numerous online articles including BusinessListening.com, The Training Report, and SelfGrowth.com.  She has written two eBooks, ‘The Power to Decide: An Executive’s Guide to Conquering a Chaotic Day’ and ‘Climbing Out of the Meeting Pit: Smart Meetings for Smart Leaders’, co-authored the best selling book ‘101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life’, and has just released her book Leaders: Their Stories, Their Words, Conversations with Human-Based Leaders™. 

Donna's blog Perspectives™ is avidly read by subscribers from 145 countries and territories. She writes a leadership column for Fast Company called “Jumping Into the Deep End of Leadership”, is a contributing author for The International Journal of Coaching in Organizations, and is an expert author for Evan Carmichael: Motivation and Strategies for Entrepreneurs.

She is certified in Organizational Psychology with a focus in executive coaching by The Professional School of Psychology and has been certified by the International Academy of Behavioral Medicine, Counseling and Psychotherapy as a Diplomate in Professional Coaching.  

She has a proven track record in developing sustainable leadership.