My clients inspire me! Have you had it with the same old gripes? Are you yearning to step into your power and claim the life of your dreams? Do you have ambitions to make great contributions and flourish personally while doing so?

I am eager to coach you when you are taking new initiatives and need to grow rapidly to deal with increased complexity and challenge. This happens when your start-up is taking off or your career is rising to new heights. You’re ready for me as your coach when you’re moving to new part of the world and feeling both daunted and excited by what’s ahead.

Entrepreneurs whose enterprises are growing, executives gaining new responsibilities, and professionals adapting to a new culture are some of the client profiles that fit especially well with my coaching style and skills.

I will be an accountability partner to you. Most of the work of transformation will occur in between the times you and I speak. In ways that we co-design, I will hold you accountable to your own commitments.

With me as your coach, you set the agenda. Together we look in you for the land of possibility. Together we chart the paths from where you are now to where you yearn to be.

You will gain resourcefulness and power, finding within your own ingenuity the solutions to your problems. You will create new patterns and habits that serve you better than your old ones, in better alignment with your personal values and your purpose in life.

In individual coaching, dialogue between us will be our primary interaction in 45-minute sessions by telephone, every two weeks. We will correspond between sessions to the extent it is helpful. I coach primarily in English, and can use French, Arabic, and/or German as a secondary coaching language.

As a “co-active” coach, my focus is both on your being and your doing. Typical elements of sessions include values clarification, brainstorming, identifying plans of action, and examining modes of operating in life. I will sometimes ask powerful questions and other times hold spacious silence as you work something out.

In team coaching, the process is similar. Together the group sets the agenda. Together we look within the group for what is most needed. Organizations—like individuals—hold within themselves values, hopes, dreams, self-sabotaging patterns, traumas, untapped potential, forgotten resources, and the ever-present possibility of transformation.

My clients have undergone tremendous transformation over the course of leadership development journeys that I have designed and delivered. At the individual and organizational level, they have seen dramatic improvements in their performance.

I have designed and delivered many leadership development programs in organizations across industries and in the public sector, in the USA and the Middle East.

Although leadership development programs are most often for groups, we could craft a bespoke leadership development journey just for you. I am open to co-creating with you a personal development program that brings you into a realization of your wildest dreams. If you are willing and able to make an earth-shattering, life-changing commitment to yourself, let’s talk!

Team members challenge and support one another in this process. The challenges and delights of team dynamics fuel the learning.

Since such journeys unfold over time, I typically will accompany clients over the course of 3-12 months. Intensive experiences will be interspersed over the duration of your journey of change. In between, you will put into practice what you are learning and experiment with new possibilities.

In the design phase, we will gain clarity about what is currently happening. We will align on audacious goals that best express your purpose and ambition. The elements of your journey will then be custom designed to achieve your goals. One leader from your organization will be the champion for this journey, and typically another will be the liaison for logistics.

Following the design phase, the real journey begins. Depending on the scale of the program and number of participants, I will bring additional coaches and transformation facilitators to collaborate on certain interventions. We will communicate regularly about how the journey is going and whether any course adjustments are required.

I lead primarily in English, and can use French, Arabic, and German as secondary working languages.

My speeches and workshop facilitation draw upon my reflection and writing as well as my action and experience in the world. I am ready to craft a customized talk or workshop for a special event or occasion, or for a group that is in need of stimulation and growth. I am eager to share with your audience the fruits of my work as a scholar, a leader, and a contemplative in action.

Sample topics of speeches and academic talks include:

• Islamic Spiritual Resources for Leaders Today
• What Leaders Can Learn from Muslim-Christian Dialogue
• Beyond Theological Hate-Speech in Christian-Muslim Relations
• Queer Comparative Theology

Workshops make learning real, through lived experience. I have designed and facilitated a wide range of leadership development workshops, including:

• Becoming an Inspiring Leader through Finding Meaning
• Managing your Energy, Finding your Power
• Taste, Smell, and Touch Islam: A cultural salon of the five senses
• My Land, Your Land, Our Land: Moving into One Another’s Stories

I believe that too often we miss what is really happening. Too often we are half-consciously performing hackneyed caricatures received from TV sitcoms and advertisements. Dazed moments accumulate, and we zone out.

Looking at ourselves more consciously, we notice misalignment between our lives and our values. We can see how pre-fabricated goals and uncreative forms of living determine our professional quests, our domestic projects, our leisurely pursuits. We observe cookie cutter culture lopping off the most quirky and delightful parts of ourselves.

Exploring forgotten nooks of reality can clear this desperate malaise. The grandeur of the universe is ever there. We need only notice it. Our magnificence rests deep within. We need only attend to it.

As an explorer of ultimate reality, both within and without, I traverse the treasure stores of the human experience that are held in the Christian and Islamic traditions. I am no archaeologist. Fascinated as I am by the thoughts of great souls and sharp minds of history, my final focus is us here now. I traverse those forgotten stores to retrieve treasures of insight and possibility for us today.

I am a theologian who constructs new meaning for us here now in conversation with sages of the past. My research is time travel. I am a comparative theologian who builds bridges of mutual understanding between Christians and Muslims and others who attend to Ultimate Reality. My writing begets solidarity and appreciation.

I practice interreligious dialogue to make real and practical and present the vision I hold for mutual understanding and appreciation among members of different communities. I practice queer theology to re-think the body and the erotic, their meanings and their possibilities.