Michelle Ornat, ACC
Coaching changed my life.
Today I help women dissolve the gap between the day they're living and the life they imagined.
After more than two decades in public library leadership, I knew it was time for a new chapter. Coaching had been reshaping my life and leadership since 2014, helping me see my blind spots, strengthen my self-trust, and move forward without waiting for perfect conditions.
That shift changed everything.
What does idea to action mean?
I used to call myself a life and leadership coach. It was accurate and it never fit, mostly because the women I work with don't arrive sorted into categories.
She's a director and she wants to write. She's built a business and she's ready to pivot. She's leaving a career and starting something new. She's retired and there's a thing she never got to. She's a student, just beginning, committed to knowing her why. She's worked nonstop and there's a trip she keeps not taking.
She's not waiting for someday anymore.
What they have in common isn't a role. It's the pull. An idea she keeps returning to, that hasn't gone away, that she hasn't started. That's what I coach. The pull, what's between her and it, and what she does about it.
What transformed me most
Women's-centered coaching taught me how to help women rewrite old stories, including my own. iPEC's Energy Leadership gave me the foundation to coach the person, not the narrative. It taught me to understand energy and respond with choice instead of reaction. And Positive Intelligence® (PQ) changed how I live and coach: daily practices to intercept the Saboteurs, access Sage, and build mental fitness that sticks.
PQ doesn't just make me a better coach. It's helping me live my best life.
I know what it costs to wait. I've seen capable women delay their voice and shrink their ambitions. I've watched somedays turn into super sad nevers. I've seen teams lose their mission to drama and inaction.
I care too much about women's potential and organizational impact to accept any of it as normal.
Idea to Action Coach for Women
How I help clients
I help women move through the self-doubt, the overthinking, the indecision, the avoidance, the "who am I to?," and the weight of other people's opinions, so they can live fully now.
Not when they hope to retire.
Not for three days on a seven-day vacation while the other four are spent dreading Monday.
I bring structure, strategy, and proven tools like mental fitness training, energy assessments, and a framework I build with each client, not around them. Whether the work starts with a leadership challenge or a life one, it doesn't stay in a single lane. Because neither do the women I work with.
I build everything around three things: joy (because life's too short not to), learning (because growth never stops), and connection (because we're not meant to do this alone).