"I haven't a clue as to how my story will end. But that's all right. When you set out on a journey and night covers the road, you don't conclude the road has vanished. And how else could we discover the stars?" - Nancy Willard
"I haven't a clue as to how my story will end. But that's all right. When you set out on a journey and night covers the road, you don't conclude the road has vanished. And how else could we discover the stars?" - Nancy Willard
Meet Carmell
HER BIO
Carmell is a master transformational coach and founder of the Center for Transformational Influence. CTI is her brainchild for coaching and training self-actualized practices in relationships, leadership, influence, and personal fulfillment across the globe.
She leads groups in her flagship programs, takes influencers on international adventures, and works directly with executives and entrepreneurs. Carmell is an author with multiple books in the publishing process, and a riveting speaker and trainer who moves audiences into a transformational experience.
Executive Coach
Having worked with thousands over the past two decades, Carmell mentors leaders across many sectors to develop vision in alignment with who they are. Skilled in strategy and conflict resolution, she brings transformational techniques to her coaching, to achieve synergistic solutions. Her clients routinely make significant career and personal leaps during their work with Carmell. She has the uncanny ability to identify the key factors that bring about desired changes not only at the outset, but continually throughout the coaching relationship.
Serial Entrepreneur
Carmell had previously left the corporate world in the 90s. Acquiring an interdisciplinary background in Philosophy and Social Theory, she sold her 20-year wellness center to launch her current company in 2012 as the vehicle to move her work internationally and create Location Independence. She now lives in and travels to different countries for part of each year.
Passions and Pursuits
Carmell is a skilled storyteller, world traveler, and oils artist, preferring large canvases and palette knife-work for her intense abstracts and unusual figure studies. She has, and currently serves on several boards for different causes. She is working toward her French proficiency as she seeks out hiking and trail running opportunities. She has a rigorous meditation practice, leads philosophical book groups and often treats her clients to her sumptuous Mediterranean or French cooking on their VIP weekends.
Her passion is for the study and raising of consciousness in all areas of life, for critical inquiry and conflict resolution, and for working with the paradox of power and control in human behavior.
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
~ T. S. Eliot
My Story
Huge success with my 1st cohort beta group for Core Self Discovery I. Began Core Self Discovery II. Launched official CSD I. Book proposals developed toward publishing. Built and launched my own curated online community: Center for Transformational Influence using the Mighty Networks platform. A decades-long dream coming into reality. Finally getting a gorgeous loft in SLC to have my own space through the pandemic. Aching to get out of the country.
Started the year with two months studying French in Aix en Provence. Madeira vacation. Lisbon. Landed back in the U.S. on March 13th to the country–and the world–shutting down. My two-week-stay in Utah turned into two years. Executive coaching. Developed flagship program: Core Self Discovery. Hit my FULL STOP: Went totally off the grid in May and disappeared for a year. This was strangely an internal mandate, not a thought-out decision. But, this– “In order to go forward, you must first stop. In order to go far, you must stop a long time.” And I did.
Drove up the East Coast in two crazy days. Italy Renaissance Women’s Retreat 4th year. Paris. Rome. Living for a time in Connecticut and nearly buying a home. Executive clients and VIP weekends. The beginning surges of my Full Stop… Left on New Years Eve for Paris.
Continuing the book project. Developing the Wake-Up Call Experience and leading them along with the ALL IN retreats across the U.S. Driving cross country, Utah to Florida to live for a bit and see if FL was home. It wasn’t. Italy Renaissance Women’s Retreat 3rd year. Delaware and the beach. The years of micro-developments are hard to live through, let alone measure. But they are a real step on the path of every great vision. And 2018 was that for sure.
Italy Renaissance Women’s Retreat 2nd year. Hit my Utah expiration date, packed everything into storage and left for Europe. Living without a home as I searched for where to plant myself. Bari coast and the Adriatic. Venice. Trainings in Italy and Palo Alto CA. Business growing across the U.S. and new opportunities abroad. Women’s Economic Forum in The Hague. Client VIPs in Paris. Bali. India. Launching the domestic ALL IN Retreat for women in NH. CA Publisher requested my book proposal for The Transformation Effect. Finished the year on the Portuguese island of Madeira, writing and hiking the 2000 meter peaks.
2016: LifeArtist Global™ Is Born “Your Genius Expressed, Creating Global Impact”
2015-2016: Bali And A New Kind Of Location Independence
2015: India. Writers’ Retreat. NYT Bestselling Author-Book Coach. My 1st International Women’s Retreat. Oprah Winfrey…
2012: Sell My 20-Year Business. Move To A New City. Start A New Company.
I knew I had to go. I didn’t have anything to “go to” yet. My head said I was stupid. My gut and my soul were already dragging me out of the last of the life I’d lived for 20 years. When something in you knows, but your life hasn’t caught up to that yet? Hasn’t filled in all those “What’s” and “How’s”? I had never done this on my own. I had no idea whether I could. I would wake up with anxiety every day and try to figure out a next step
2012: That Time I Jumped Off The Edge Without A Plan. Which Time? Right.
It was more than two years since my 20-year relationship had ended, yet even as I tried to move forward in my life, I couldn’t let go. And to make it worse, I had no spark of motivation and no vision of a future for myself. It wasn’t depression, it was just blank. I’d never hit ‘blank’ before. It was terrifying. Read More
2009: The End Of My 20 Year Marriage
Though much of this part of my journey is in my book, Life Is Not One Thing, and I will let the story be told there, I will say this:
Living through my greatest fear and grief is the most hard-won gift of freedom I have ever received
Resilience is only built in the spaces where you do not have it
Resurrection: What do I want to tell you? It sounds great as a chapter title after the fact, but it is agonizingly painful. You have to die before you can resurrect. The more ashes to rise from, the longer the rising. And the greater.
We all want freedom… but with an insurance policy. We both know it doesn’t come that way. Freedom is living, and living is risk.
Learn to respect your shame instead of fearing it, and it will lead you to an unconquerable self-respect.
Something in my soul knew this loss would come 10 years before it happened. What to do with that awareness now directs the work of the rest of my life.
2005: February. Facing The Shame And Returning To The Scene Of My Greatest Failure: Going Back To University At 35 Years Old
2004 New Years Eve: Naked With My Beloved Excuse
2001: Why I Killed My New Thriving Coaching Practice In Its 2nd Year
Before coaching became a thing, I started my coaching practice in 2000. It took off and in one year I had created a strong following. This career was so in line with my heart and soul, finally. I loved what I did and adored my clients. Read More
1999: My Brave New World At 30
I half-woke on a November morning in 1999. The utterly clear thought went through my body, “I’M NOT HAPPY.” I knew instantly that it was true on the deepest level of my being. I immediately responded, “Why?” The answer came just as quick, just as clear, “I CAN NEVER BE GOOD ENOUGH FOR GOD.” True. It was true! What?! Read More
1999: Fae. When the Student is Ready, the Teacher Appears
She found me as I was guest teaching a business class at a local college. A master yoga instructor, healer, trauma touch therapist, renowned artist and art therapy practitioner, she pursued my coming to see her for a session for nine months before I finally did.
I’ve come to realize there was some deeper agreement between us. She woke me up. It was upon my work with her, and her subsequent mentoring, that the trajectory of my post-corporate life began to take quick and deliberate shape. Through her work of teaching me to trust my intuition, to practice consciousness, and to identify and banish old dogmatic beliefs, I came to found my initial coaching practice with surprising success. Read More
1997: Being “Downsized” Corrected The Course Of My Life
I’d moved from project management into team management in the software company I’d been at for 7 years. I was “on the career path” and proud of the recognition I’d received.
Seven months later my position was inexplicably downsized. My boss sat in my office. “You can take voluntary layoff with a 3 weeks severance package, or you can take a position in shipping. You’ll still make the same salary (a management salary, mind you), you’ll just be working in shipping under that manager.” Read More
1993: Starting My First Business–A Wellness Center–At 24-Years Old, While Still In The Corporate World
1990: Deciding In A Single Week To Leave Home, And WA State – Never Coming Back
1989: Crash & Burn At 20-Years Old
It was on New Years of 1989 that I unknowingly met the woman I would spend the next twenty years of my life married to. It developed in the most unfathomable way.
Depression had taken hold before my third year of college. One day, I lied to my boss just so I could sleep longer. The lie blew up in my face two weeks later and I was suspended from my job. My parents, desperate for what to do with me, shipped me back to college hoping that would fix the problem.
1987: The Writing Was Already On The Wall…
At 18-years old, my best friend’s mother, an educator and humanitarian, unexpectedly pulled me aside to thank me. “For what?” I asked. She recounted my calling her son/my friend out on his lack of understanding the double standard women face. And of his responsibility to stand alongside women for change and equity.
The truth was, I had unequivocally expected his understanding of this. And his respect. It never occurred to me that this was up for debate.
Having never had another adult woman acknowledge my ideas, let alone agree with them, something in me awoke at that moment. She told me his behaviors had changed. His way of seeing women and the world, and he was now vocal and insistent in advocating for women. “As a mother and a woman,” she said, “she was wholeheartedly grateful.”
1974 – 5-Years-Old, “I’m Walking To My First Day Of Kindergarten All By Myself…”
It was that summer of 1974 before I began kindergarten. Mark, who was a year ahead of and had taught me to swing on the hand-me-down swingset in the backyard, was my important escort for Orientation Day. The intent was to ”try out” this drastic 5-year-old life change with a friend. I was thrilled. I couldn’t wait to start.
A few weeks before school began, I informed my mom I would be walking to school the first day by myself. She disagreed.
Over those next 20 days, we argued like WWF pros. She threw down–”I was too young! There were TWO very busy streets to be crossed (without lights or stop signs) before getting to the crosswalk zones around the school. I might get lost. …Or worse.” Read More
LET’S CONNECT
Does Carmell’s story resonate with you? To explore a coaching relationship with Carmell, schedule a free 30 minute discovery-strategy session here. Or you can ask a question via our contact form.
