Dori Klass & Associates is a consultancy and coaching practice devoted to personal leadership, masterful living, performance excellence and prosperity based on values-centered living, working and partnering, and bonding on our strengths.   

Meet Dori Klass

Competence, compassion, and courage. That’s just part of what you’ll experience when working with Dori Klass: coach, consultant, speaker, author, trainer and workshop leader.

A 22-year veteran of corporate America, Dori is an accomplished and “street smart” business executive and leader with extensive experience in sales, marketing, merger & acquisition integration management, and business development.  Anchored in her successes in the corporate work place and her core values, and informed by a rigorous process of self-assessment and personal development, she reinvented herself, renegotiating every critical relationship in her life, beginning with the one with herself.  As a result of her decision to leave the corporate world for a sabbatical during which she committed to focusing on this personal development work, she not only asked and answered key questions, she re-envisioned her life, became healthier and wealthier, completed a marathon, built a happier marriage and has enjoyed four amazing years in a more present and active role with her children. Her goal was to re-enter the work force over time, more fully engaged, feeling more in choice, leading to her strengths, and honoring her priorities and primary relationships—all at the right time, with the right people and under the right circumstances.  

In 2003, Dori launched her “second act,” joining the ranks of educated and competent professional moms as a professionally trained and certified executive coach and leadership consultant.  Passionate about personal leadership and its role in healing and/or strengthening our individuals, communities and institutions, Dori has made it a priority to develop mastery in each of her core roles, as a woman, a wife, a mother, and a coach committed to helping people to know themselves, to be empowered, to use their power well and to lead to and bond on their strengths at all times—this is her definition of personal leadership.   

In this context Dori integrated her business know-how, entrepreneurial spirit, and passion for each of us (including our children) by launching Dori Klass & Associates, a coaching and consultancy business focused on helping each of us see ourselves as leaders in our own lives and experience the exceptional results that come from living, working and building healthy relationships from this perspective. Over the last several years Dori has built a reputation and a following for her phenomenal leadership programs for kids (adolescent through college age) and the adults who engage with them—parents, guardians, teachers, mentors and employers.  She frequently speaks on personal leadership in life and work and on creating the conditions necessary to thrive. Dori addresses both what this is and how to do it in all aspects of her work.  She has authored several articles and delivered a number of lay sermons on the topic.

Dori is an active member of the International Coach Federation (ICF), the San Diego Professional Coaches Alliance and Toastmasters International. In 2004, she obtained her certification in Organization Development from DePaul University and earned a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC) status through The Coaches Training Institute (CTI), one of the most respected, accredited coach training programs in the United States. In 1997, Dori earned an Executive MBA from the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management in Lake Forest, IL and in 1982, she obtained a BSE degree in Biomedical Engineering and a BA degree in Germanic Languages from Duke University in Durham, N.C.  Dori is actively pursuing accreditation with the ICF at this time, eager to join the rank and file of professionally trained and certified coaches who “walk their talk” and who have committed themselves to a higher set of standards, to lifelong learning, to gaining exceptional experience and to logging hundreds, even thousands, of paid coaching hours, all leading to better and more consistent client service and mastery in the profession.

Originally from Mattapoisett, MA, a small waterfront town on the entrance to Cape Cod, Dori has enjoyed calling many places home. In the summer of 2007, Dori, her husband and three of her four boys will be moving their home from Carlsbad, CA, to Tucson, AZ, where they look forward to making new friends and experiencing life in the sacred spaces of the desert southwest.

Dori is in the process of capturing her personal and professional process of transformation, her leadership program for kids and lessons learned in a series of books, the first of which is targeted for publication in late 2007.