My Story
Kirsten Schmidtke is a professional coach, speaker, and lover of lake life.
She lives in Toronto and spends her summers at her heart-home on Lake of the Woods.
Kirsten’s coaching practice is built on trust, clarity, and contribution. She believes that success happens when we build trusted relationships with ourselves and with others. When you lead with honesty and transparency, you show up in alignment with yourself, your purpose, and move up the spiral of possibility. She takes an inside-out approach guiding clients to find clarity on what they want, followed by how to take steps to get there. Her combination of conceptual and tactical tools supports clients to live and work in integrity and alignment while achieving their goals and experiencing success.
Kirsten first took the plunge into entrepreneurship when she started a backyard swimming-lessons program as a teenager. She called California home after high school, spending two years traveling, teaching, and performing as an artist and entertainer. She was inspired to open her second business: a dance and music studio for students of all ages. Graduating university led her to move to Toronto where her corporate career found her: technology sales.
Between Softchoice and Amazon Web Services, Kirsten experienced award-winning success by building trusted relationships, solving complex business problems, and being a leader amongst her teammates. During her time in corporate, Kirsten learned how to navigate decision making, prepare for difficult conversations, and build self awareness to strengthen her confidence - all of which she brings to her coaching practice. While learning about the ever-changing technology landscape, Kirsten enjoyed diving deeper into customer business, leadership, cultural, and operational challenges as she supported organizations across industries and stages of growth.
With her curiosity piqued about the inner workings of a business, Kirsten explored how she could incorporate the creativity she was craving outside of corporate. This led her to join jewelry brand Klas squared in partnership with her mom. In true entrepreneur fashion, Kirsten guided the company’s digital transformation by wearing many hats including fashion stylist, digital marketer, and becoming the face of the brand. Kirsten currently consults and coaches Klas squared on operations and business strategy.
When she found herself at a crossroads in her career, she sought the support of a coach and for the first time in a long time, was challenged in a new way. She learned how to shift away from the hustle and chase, and move towards feeling good in her work, happy in her life, and whole in her being. She wasn’t being told what to do, but rather being asked what she wanted - the same place she starts with her clients today.
Kirsten experienced first hand the transformational power of coaching and knew she had found her next career path. Her love for learning, building new knowledge, and deepening her understanding, has led her to show up and serve as a coach as she integrates the skills, strengths, and experiences she’s acquired in her corporate career and entrepreneurial endeavours. By starting with who we are being, we are led to take inspired action that comes from within us creating more fulfillment in our work and our lives. This is the inside-out approach. This is the work that leads to increased happiness, balance, and freedom.
Kirsten is known to facilitate engaging and energetic conversations to inspire, motivate, and lead others. Her masterful speaking and listening abilities lend themselves to bringing people together to learn through private coaching, workshops, speaking engagements, and facilitated learning. Kirsten’s ability to look behind closed doors provides her clients with a thinking partner capable of inspiring new ideas, unlocking creative thinking, and discovering new ways of solving problems. Whether working with an individual or a team, Kirsten’s ability to generate and explore new ideas allows her to think of unconventional and unusual ways to approach challenges and to solve problems. The result: Kirsten inspires and motivates followers to become leaders themselves.