Cynthia Luna, Partner

Cynthia is a Certified Integral Coach and serves as faculty in the highly respected global coach-training program at New Ventures West, based in San Francisco.

Providing services in the United States and Latin America, Cynthia Luna is co-founder of Praxsys Leadership, a leadership development firm dedicated to supporting individuals, teams and organizations to fulfill their purpose with excellence.

Cynthia’s clients describe her coaching style as an artful weaving together of in-depth methodology with direct yet compassionate feedback and a movement to action. She combines cross-sectorial experience with an extensive knowledge of leadership development, executive coaching and group dynamics. This expertise enables her to help clients gain self-awareness and move forward on their goals with a better understanding of how their experience and environment impact their ability to create sustainable change.
As a coach and consultant she has designed and implemented leadership development, executive and group coaching programs in English and in Spanish, supporting the alignment of diverse multifunctional teams. She has supported organizations and leaders managing small- and large-scale change, adapting and growing in new leadership roles, moving through strategic realignments, integrating multicultural teams and becoming more effective leaders.
Cynthia has a history of pioneering leadership in business and community development, serving diverse industries including technology, manufacturing, education, healthcare, and nonprofit, among others. Her professional background has included leadership positions in multinational corporations (such as ADC Telecommunications), finance and economic development (ShoreBank Advisory Services), and health policy (Latino Health Collaborative). This has given her an experience base to understand the on-the-job pressures and challenges her clients have to overcome and enables her to work with them on creating strategies that are effective, pragmatic and transformational. She also served as Teaching Faculty on Human Development for Social Leadership in the Masters of Social Impact program at Claremont Lincoln University.
She is certified as an Integral Coach by New Ventures West and holds the Professional Coach Certification (PCC) from the International Coach Federation. She has an MBA in Organizational Development and Operations from Loyola University Chicago.
Cynthia has a passion for international voluntary service, and has held leadership positions in NGOs such as the World Alliance of YMCAs in Geneva, Switzerland. She loves traveling, painting, running, yoga and enjoying world music and dance.
Cynthia is a Certified Integral Coach and serves as faculty in the highly respected global coach-training program at New Ventures West, based in San Francisco.

Max Freund, Partner

Max Freund is a coach, consultant, and program evaluator specializing in growing collective leadership for transformational change. Max’s passion for collaboration and systems-level changemaking has guided his work in places ranging from California to Africa and Latin America.

He specializes in coaching leadership teams to apply evidence-based practices in shared leadership, systems thinking, and organizational learning.

Max’s background in coaching and organizational development consulting features extensive work in technical, health, higher education, and human services fields. He has provided counsel on leadership and organizational effectiveness to companies in the medical, construction, and philanthropic sectors.

Engagements have included leadership team coaching, culture change, organizational assessment and audits, board/governance development, strategic planning, and program evaluation.
Max holds an MA in Psychology with a concentration in Organizational Behavior from Claremont Graduate University, where he completed Ph.D. coursework and preliminary qualifying requirements. He also holds a Master’s in Intercultural & International Management from SIT Graduate Institute. In his volunteer leadership he is a Board Member of The Alliance for Nonprofit Management, the national voice and catalyst for nonprofit organizational effectiveness and sustainability.
Having lived in Mexico, India, Africa, and Central America, Max loves traveling internationally and exploring the multicultural musical and culinary landscape of the Los Angeles region. He is a dedicated practitioner of self-inquiry and mindfulness practices, including over 19 years in the ManKind Project (where he is a Co-Leader Candidate) and 9 years as a student of the Ridhwan School’s Diamond Approach. He also enjoys running, road cycling, and hiking in the San Gabriel foothills.

Fabian Di Felice, Integral Coach

Sahar Azarabadi, Integral Coach

Sahar Azarabadi is devoted to helping organizations, leaders, and high-performance teams work together more effectively and skillfully. Her focus is on the growth and development of professionals in order to cultivate long-term excellence in performance including strategy, productivity and communication.

Sahar’s clients report many of the following outcomes:

Improved capacity to inquire, listen, respond and lead others with respect, empathy and compassion

Greater skill in building trust and credibility with executive leadership team or board, team, colleagues and customers

- Deeper, more centered leadership presence, particularly amidst conflict or challenge
- Improved ability to build powerful networks of support and influence others
- Increased capacity for creativity and innovation
Sahar brings a deep background of over fifteen years management and executive level leadership experience in sales, marketing and business development to her coaching, facilitation, training, and workshops. She is a certified Integral Coach® from New Ventures West and a Leadership Embodiment Associate.
Sahar works with emerging to executive level leaders in biotech/pharma, medical device/diagnostics, healthcare, hospitality, technology, and insurance and financial services. She is focused on improving organizational capabilities and culture, developing leaders who are aligned with purpose, improving communication across teams and within organizations, fostering deep listening to build trust, and cultivating emotional intelligence to foster collaboration across teams.
She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. Sahar is a lifelong learner and committed to personal and professional development in order to best serve her clients and the world. She is fluent in English, Farsi and Turkish. Her upbringing and extensive world travel have cultivated and enabled cross-cultural awareness and appreciation. She is a long-time student of Eastern and Western traditions, philosophy and poetry— particularly Plato, Rumi and David Whyte. She is also a mindfulness practitioner, avid traveler, and lover of music.

Melinda Stephenson, Integral Coach

Melinda Stephenson is a coach and consultant with over 22 years of experience in human development on an individual, team and organization level. She provides an excellent balance of strategic vision, coaching, and operational execution abilities.

Melinda provides outcome-based coaching to senior teams and senior executives. Her coaching is a blend of pragmatic guidance and curious exploration into the underlying assumptions and thought patterns which support leadership performance. She draws on her knowledge of Integral development, neuroscience, positive psychology, emotional intelligence and mindfulness to help leaders and their teams expand possibilities and realize their potential.

She has helped clients build new skills in areas such as strategic thinking, influence and persuasiveness, relationship and conflict management.
Melinda’s areas of expertise include:
- Supporting women in senior leadership roles
- Helping leaders understand and coach their staff to expand capabilities
- Communication skills to address challenging politics and relationships at all levels in the hierarchy
- Managing complex change and culture shifts
Melinda also builds talent strategies for high-growth, global clients and she has completed extensive work in the creation of leadership development program design. She is curriculum designer and co-founder of The Leadership Room, a one-year learning experience for high potential executives.
Prior to her career as a coach and consultant, Melinda held senior positions in Human Resources. She served as VP of HR and Sr. Director of Organization Development for Gap, Inc., providing consulting support to the CEO and leadership team. In these roles, she designed and executed human capital strategy to expand the talent pipeline and build global general manager skills. She also managed large-scale change efforts in product innovation, sourcing/inventory management, HR training strategy, and brand marketing. Melinda has also held HR business partner roles at American Express and Macy’s.
Melinda earned her Integral Coach® certification with New Ventures West in 2004, where she also serves as faculty. She holds a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University, and certifications in Booth Task Cycle 360° Leadership Surveys, PDI Profilor tools, Lominger Voices & Career Architect, Myers-Briggs Personality Type Instrument (MBTI), and others. In her volunteer service, she is a mentor and leadership curriculum designer for SHE CAN, catalyzing global change by supporting the education and development of women from post-conflict countries. She also volunteers as a program facilitator at San Quentin State Prison for Insight Prison Project. Helping those who are incarcerated to develop behaviors guided by insight, accountability and compassion.

Dawn Brown, Integral Coach

Angella Okawa, Associate

Angella guides international tech and nonprofit organizations and teams to experience greater creativity, cohesion, communication, and effectiveness. She has a unique approach to the conversation around diversity that centers on adaptability, resilience, antifragility, and real change through brave dialog and cross-cultural engagement.

Her clients benefit from her rich background in technology, design thinking, integral coaching, and mindful somatic psychotherapy. They appreciate her grounded presence and ability to lift groups out of rigid mindsets and unrecognized systems to see new possibilities.

Her career began in the tech space as a designer, developer, and manager, working with several successful startups including Mailbox, which was purchased by Dropbox for over $100M. At the internationally renown design firm IDEO she was recognized for her ability to build bridges and understanding between engineering, design, and marketing. She now holds an MA in psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and is certified as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She is also a certified Integral Coach through New Ventures West and trained in the Hakomi Method, a mindfulness body-centered psychotherapy, and group process through Cross-Cultural Communications.
The heart of Angella’s unique approach arose in early life. As a child, she spent time in Japan and the US learning to navigate two very different cultures. By necessity, she learned to read subtle cues about the expectations and reactions of others and quickly adapt her style of expressing… and of understanding. She now teaches these skills to leaders ready to enable highly effective diverse teams.
Meditation practice and deep inquiry are also essential aspects of her work. Her personal journey into wisdom traditions includes immersion in a forest monastery in the mountains of Thailand and multi-day silent meditation retreats through Spirit Rock and others.
Outside of work she relishes her early morning cup of freshly brewed coffee and a good book. She enjoys studying the Japanese language, visiting family in Japan, and exploring other cultures and perspectives through conversations and world travel. She also loves dreaming up and cooking creative dishes using organic ingredients she cultivates in her home garden.

Troy Harden, PhD, LCSW, Associate

Dr. Troy Harden has over 25 years’ experience working in higher education and community settings. His on-going research interests are in racial equity, community violence, and social trauma and interventions within the community and organizational settings.

He recently developed and led Northeastern Illinois’ University’s Master of Social Work Program, and is now Director of the Race and Ethnic Studies Institute (RESI) at Texas A & M University. He has worked closely with Communities Partnering for Peace (CP4P), an effort to develop violence interventions for African American and Latino street outreach workers addressing violence in Chicago.

As well, he is the lead researcher with the Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance’s Community-based Crime Reduction Grant in Englewood, partnering with the Englewood Public Safety Task Force, and he is a member of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Public Safety Research Advisory Committee.
He has served as a leadership consultant with multiple institutions on issues of race, gender and poverty, including the City of Chicago’s Department of Family Support Services, the Latino Policy Forum, Chicago Public Schools, Fathers, Families, and Healthy Communities, the Pan African Association, the Illinois African American Coalition for Prevention, Burrell Communications and Cook County’s Project Brotherhood, a Black Men’s Health Clinic. He is also Board President of the Chicago Torture Justice Center, which provides mental health and community services for survivors of police torture by Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and others impacted by state-sponsored violence.
He received an outstanding educator award from Congressman Danny K. Davis in 2017, is a graduate of Loyola University Chicago’s Master of Social Work program, and received his doctorate from DePaul University’s School of Education.

Adam Molyneux-Berry, Partner

Over the last two decades Adam has worked with hundreds of high-impact leaders across Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East – with governments, Fortune 500 companies, social enterprises, nonprofits, SMEs, and at the White House.

Today’s leaders and changemakers are faced with challenges of unprecedented complexity and uncertainty. Adam Molyneux-Berry’s work is to help them navigate through this, whilst showing up as the best version of themselves - in their teams, organisations, and at home.

From building and running incubators and networks of technology innovation hubs, to training presidential candidates in creative leadership, Adam has had a storied career in which he has made every mistake in the book. These mistakes have informed his coaching and systems-change work more than any formal education could.
In his own leadership journey Adam has launched over 10 organisations – including SMEs, nonprofits and social businesses – 3 of which were launched during the Arab Spring. Having experienced the full-spectrum of leadership challenges, from personal and team burnout to systems-level collaborations during extreme uncertainty and volatility, Adam understands first-hand just what it takes to thrive individually and collectively, in the midst of complexity.
Adam leverages his deep networks to creatively solve challenges by bringing in the right people for the specific task at hand. Working across languages, cultures and generations in complex socio-political contexts has been one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of his career. In 2014 Adam was awarded an Ashoka Fellowship for work he did during the Arab Spring – leveraging the Green Economy in the MENA region as a safe space for youth, government, private sector, civil society and academia to work together in rebuilding the region. Adam has a degree in philosophy, is a certified Integral Coach, a certified mindfulness meditation teacher and a graduate of the executive programme at THNK School of Creative Leadership in Amsterdam. His work has always been to create safe spaces to shift consciousness, activating people as changemakers, contributing to planetary wellbeing. In his coaching practice, using a multi-disciplinary approach, Adam works with leaders to support them in showing up as the best versions of themselves – accompanying them in their self-discovery of what moves them to be forces for positive change in the world. In his systems-level work, Adam works with changemakers across entire ecosystems, using Collaborative Innovation, Human Centred Design and Social Impact methodologies to solve shared challenges and scale impact collectively. The combination of deep interpersonal work with leaders, and broad systemic impact across ecosystems is part of Adam’s theory of change: By working on our inner worlds and collaborating radically in our outer worlds, collective wellbeing is not only possible, it is inevitable.

Dawn brings over 25 years of leadership, coaching and organizational consulting experience to leaders and teams in the private, public and non-profit sectors. Prior to being an independent coach & consultant she worked for a large telecommunications company in various leadership roles and business units.

She has done expansive work with executives and managers in a wide range of organizations including telecommunications, health care, biotech, financial institutions, residential & commercial builders and law firms. Her coaching approach is based on a developmental, integral methodology.

Dawn’s coaching style, a blend of, inquiry, rigor, and compassion, supports clients to learn new competencies needed to be outstanding leaders. Together with her clients she builds measurable, behavioral outcomes.
She is currently on faculty for New Ventures West Coaching School where she provides mentoring and coaching to future coaches. She is credentialed through the International Coach Federation and has served on the board for the Professional Coach & Mentors Association (PCMA)
From a very early age I have been intrigued about how individuals are able to embrace change while others seem immune, what dynamic prevents us from changing. I have discovered so many important components that include clarity of vision, strong communication skills and the importance of being guided as we navigate the fast pace of change. I have dedicated much of my adult life to understanding the impact the conversations we engage in (or don’t) impact our effectiveness in life. How are the conversations we have with ourselves and others impacting how our life turns out? I believe through our conversations we can experience clarity of vision, allowing for increased possibilities, creativity and empowerment all of which are necessary skills for leaders today.

Gavriella Rubin, Program Coordinator

Gavriella Rubin, MA, RYT (she/her) is a PhD candidate in Positive Organizational Psychology at Claremont Graduate University (CGU). She is passionate about understanding the relationship between workplace dynamics and psychological wellbeing, specifically in the interest of enhancing team relationships and mitigating the harmful effects of stress and burnout.

Gavriella began her academic journey at New York University (NYU), where she received her BS in Applied Psychology. At NYU and the years following her graduation, Gavriella worked as a TA for courses in Meaningful Leadership and Positive Psychology – incubating her passion for scholarship, collaborative research, teaching, and helping others to thrive.

As a yoga practitioner and teacher, Gavriella took her love of academic learning and human flourishing to pursue an MA in Yoga Studies with a focus in Yoga Therapy at Loyola Marymount University (LMU). Her research there centered around yoga, mental health, and meaning-based interventions and she continued to fulfill her love of teaching as a TA and lecturer in undergraduate courses on Yoga and Theology.
Gavriella’s background in Positive Psychology, mental health, and Yoga Studies informs her current doctoral research at CGU. She works in CGU’s Worker Wellbeing Lab on projects related to team flourishing, interdependence, mindfulness, meditation, and workplace wellbeing. She is passionate about evidence-based practice and applying scholarship to help restructure work so that workers can thrive.
Outside of work and school, Gavriella loves spending time with her husband (Luca) and pets (Léo and Aviva), teaching yoga, and trying new recipes and restaurants.

Our Team