Donia Allen

Professional Coach, United States of America

Donia believes that supporting the wellbeing of parents at all stages of their careers and lives is vital to healthy families, organizations, and communities.

She has coached working parents as they navigate personal and professional commitments and constant change at organizations around the world, including the State Department, Meta, Ted.com, Mass General Brigham, and the National Gallery of Art. She sees coaching as a practice grounded in trust, powered by curiosity, and designed to elicit the clarity and confidence people need to discover their inner teachers and thrive.

Background

Donia’s passion for developing people led her to Human Resources positions at Mass General Brigham and the Studio Museum in Harlem, and to begin her own coaching practice.

She has also worked in student affairs at Harvard Medical School and in career development at Columbia University. Her areas of expertise include learning and development, DEIB, organization development, mindfulness, and coaching. She is also a creative with extensive experience as a freelance magazine writer and poet.

Approach to coaching

Donia partners with clients to explore, align, and achieve their personal and professional goals. She is particularly interested in her clients’ unique backgrounds and values, aspirations, superpowers, and learning styles.

Her approach to coaching includes powerful questions, humor, somatics, mindfulness, flexibility, creativity and empathy. She is intensely aware of the dynamic, at times confronting nature of change, and is focused on supporting clients as they move through it.

Experience and qualifications

Donia began coaching formally in 2019 after completing Coach Academy International’s 62-hour coach certification. She has been certified at the Associate Certified Coach (ACC) level through the International Coaching Federation (ICF) since 2021. In 2023, she completed Pyramid Resource Group’s 125-credit hour Health Leadership certification.

In addition to her coach training, Donia leverages her expertise and 30 years of experience in the workplace to facilitate awareness and transformation for individual clients and by extension for teams, organizations, and communities.

“My experience was great from start to finish. Each session was structured, collaborative and concluded with us measuring the progress made toward the session goal as well as cumulatively across the previous sessions. I was supported as well as challenged throughout the process. I benefited tremendously from the quality of the questions Donia posed as well as her synthesis and reframing of things we discussed. Our work together was invaluable in helping me to recalibrate my career goals and chart a clear path forward.” Coachee

“There were a good number of

people that you touched in a way that very few ever could…You helped people in a way that was beyond anything I’ve ever seen. Probably ever will see again. Thank you for that.” Client