Awaken Coach Institute exists to make the world a braver, more loving place
Founding story & vision
On March 10, 2020, I was grounded in the Tel Aviv airport watching the world shift, as all flights were being cancelled. While searching for an alternate route home, I received a one-line download: It's time to launch Awaken.
Awaken Coach Institute was born from that small, sharp moment that changed everything. The transformational coaching work I’d been doing needed an expansive home that held community, heart, and serious craft. We launched our first depth coaching course just three months later.
What began as a brave pivot with ten participants soon became a thriving community. Our first cohort graduated that year, and Awaken Coach Institute has continued to grow, from a place where people learn not only how to coach, but how to live from courage, care, and clarity.
My hope for Awaken is simple: to help people bring more love, bravery, and spiritual alignment into their lives and leadership so they can make a wiser, kinder impact in the world.
My journey
Before founding Awaken Coach Institute, I taught coaching and designed curricula for other schools. Yet every time I tried to teach deeply within existing structures, I kept bumping into limits. The work would get watered down.
So I created my own ICF-accredited coach certification program and gathered a faculty who could teach rigorous professional craft alongside the inner work that makes it come alive. Over the years, I’ve learned that real transformation isn’t just about technique; it’s about presence.
It’s the posture of safety. The ability to receive as well as to give. The willingness to be tender and firm, both loving and powerful.
These are the qualities that transformed my own journey as a Master Certified Coach (MCC), and they form the foundation of everything we teach at Awaken.
What Awaken stands for
Awaken Coach Institute is grounded in four guiding values that shape every conversation, coaching session, and community circle:
Love:
Fierce curiosity and accepting presence. We begin by loving ourselves, loving others in the course, and loving our clients. We don't fix people - they're whole. That generous stance is the heart of our work.
Bravery:
The courage to speak truth, to be visible, to take full ownership of our lives. Transformation takes risk, and we practice bravery in service of a deeper, aligned way of living.
Trust:
Practical, earned reliability. We build trust through clarity, strong agreements, confidentiality, and consistent presence.
Spiritual Alignment:
Living and leading from clarity about the world being created through us. It's beyond religion. It's about our own grounded belief that we have collective power to co-create what's wanting to happen in the world. When purpose and action move together, transformation becomes possible.
Our work & impact
Awaken Coach Institute is an international coach training provider offering ICF-accredited courses, mentor coaching, supervision, and professional development for coaches and leaders.
Our coach certification programs meet the training requirements for ICF credentialing while helping participants cultivate the self-awareness, courage, and compassion that make coaching truly transformational.
Graduates of Awaken bring coaching and compassion into organizations, launch their own practices, and lead with greater clarity and courage. More than certification, we offer a steadying experience, one that helps people live from their center so their choices ripple outward into healthier teams, braver companies, and kinder communities.
An invitation
If you’re drawn to depth, whether you’re beginning a coaching journey, strengthening your leadership, or bringing a culture of trust and care into your organization, we’d love to meet you.
Join one of our coach training programs, attend an intro session, or reach out for a conversation. Awaken Coach Institute is for people ready to live bravely, love generously, and act from spiritual alignment.
If that’s you, you’re exactly where you’re meant to be.
Christi Byerly, MCC
Ready to live bravely, love generously, and act from spiritual alignment? We'd love to meet you.
Join one of our Q&A calls and explore your next step
