About the Founder
Dr. Max Klau
Max founded the Center for Courageous Wholeness after spending twenty years developing a powerful approach to facilitating inner development at scale.
He most recently served as the Chief Program Officer at the New Politics Academy (NPA), an organization focused on bringing more servant leaders – military vets and alumni of national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps – into politics. Max remains involved as a Senior Advisor to that organization.
Prior to NPA, he was the Vice President of Leadership Development at City Year, an education-focused AmeriCorps program.
Max received his doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2005 with a focus on human development and leadership.
Max’s writing about leadership has appeared in the Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and elsewhere. Hi first, Race & Social Change: A Quest, A Study, A Call to Action was published in 2017. His second book, Developing Servant Leaders at Scale: How to Do It and Why It Matters, was published in September 2025. The Center for Courageous Wholeness was created to bring the ideas shared in that book out into the world.
He is a husband, father, podcast host, consultant, speaker, Integral Master Coach, Inner Development Goals Ambassador and musician. Learn more about him at www.maxklau.com.
Advisors
Bryan Kohl
Founder, The Imperfect Leader | Executive Director, We Are All Music
Bryan Kohl is an award-winning executive, entrepreneur, and leadership development expert known for helping leaders and teams unlock awareness, build trust, and grow their organizations. As Founder of The Imperfect Leader and EvolveLAB, he helps executives and organizations embrace imperfection as a catalyst for growth by creating leaders who understand their greatest impact comes from self-awareness, decisiveness and resilience, not projected flawlessness.
With more than two decades of experience across technology, retail, and nonprofit sectors, Bryan has led organizational transformations, designed innovative learning strategies, and coached leaders to foster cultures of accountability, clarity, and trust. As former Executive Director of MindWise Innovations, he guided its global expansion to 27 countries and was recognized as “Innovator of the Year” by the largest trade association in Massachusetts for redefining leadership and workforce wellbeing.
Bryan also serves as Executive Director of We Are All Music, a nonprofit dedicated to strengthening and saving lives by bolstering brain health through music. In addition, he sits on the Board of Trustees at Temple Shir Tikva, where he champions interfaith inclusion and belonging.
He holds a Master’s in Adult Education from Fordham University and brings insatiable curiosity, honesty, and heart to every engagement.
Bryan is based in Wayland, MA with his wife and two children. Nothing fires him up more than experiencing live music, playing tennis, skiing (yes, he's desperate for snow - all year long), and being with friends and family.
About the Collective
The Courageous Wholeness Collective is a community of trusted, respected colleagues doing work that is highly aligned with that of the Center for Couarageous Wholeness. Each of these individuals has their own specific area of expertise, and are ready and willing to collaborate on projects where their area of focus would be strategic and complementary.
Think of this as the mycelial network of the Center; these are the individuals who provide the Center and each other with energy, inspiration, collaboration and expertise as we all seek to bring wholeness into the world in our own powerful and unique ways.
Sydney Blum
Sydney Blum helps leaders and organizations remember what’s possible when clarity, presence, and purpose guide how we lead and create change. A leadership mentor, facilitator, and social-impact strategist, she bridges intuition, innovation, and systems transformation—supporting people and teams to align inner awareness with practical action.
Through her monthly intention-setting circles, her signature program the Intuitive Leadership Intensive, and select 1:1 mentorship, Sydney helps changemakers strengthen self-trust, emotional and relational intelligence, and the capacity to lead with presence in complexity. Listeners of The Intuitively Aligned Podcast draw on her insights to navigate transition, growth, and impact with greater alignment and authenticity.
In her consulting and advisory work, Sydney partners with organizations and foundations to advance initiatives that improve outcomes in gender equity, housing stability, youth development, and community resilience. Her leadership has helped build partnerships, frameworks, and strategies that expand access to education, employment, safety, belonging, and collective wellbeing.
Whether guiding an executive through transformation or helping a system evolve, Sydney’s work deepens awareness and translates it into action. She integrates strategic insight with deep listening, multi-sensory awareness, and relational connection—helping leaders and systems align inner coherence with outer impact. Connect with her work here.
She lives on the southern shores of Georgian Bay, north of Toronto, Canada.
Colleen Cruikshank
Colleen Cruikshank is a leadership coach and educator with a deep commitment to cultivating communities and cultures that embrace differing perspectives and our common humanity. She has particular interest in working with the inner leader and in somatic and embodied practices that help leaders manage reactivity and bring out the creative potential in themselves
and their teams.
Previously, Colleen was the Director of the Schusterman Fellowship, a leadership development program for nonprofit executives, and spent more than a decade building programs for social impact leaders worldwide.
Colleen received her coaching certification from the Institute for Coaching Innovation and is certified in the Leadership Circle 360 assessment. She was selected as a 2024 Severn Leadership Group Fellow. Colleen graduated from St. Mary’s College of Maryland with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and an informal minor in rowing. Learn more about Colleen's work at Accompany.
Liz Hamor
Liz Hamor is the founder of the Center of Daring, an organization that helps organizations, businesses, churches, and individual catalysts who are ready to get courageous about transforming their spaces into places where everyone feels like they belong.
Through her equity-centered leadership consulting work at Center of Daring, she partners with clients to transform their spaces into courageous places where belonging and innovation can thrive. We believe courage is contagious and anyone can lead.
She describes herself as a catalyst for catalysts creating cultures of courage.
Liz is based in Kansas; learn more about her at www.centerofdaring.com.
Brian Rolnick-Fox
Brian Rolnick-Fox, Founder and CEO of Nimble Learning Strategies, has been using the tenets and techniques of improvisational theater as a channel for individual growth, team development, and organizational success since 1999. He has designed and delivered communication and leadership programs for a diverse set of organizations from Fortune 100 companies to nonprofit agencies some of which include: AbbVie, Goodyear, Harvard Business School, Inspiring Educators, New Politics Academy, Prudential, and the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.
Brian also is a sought-after speaker having appeared in a variety of venues including Citibank’s Leadership Awareness Month, Linkage’s Global Institute for Leadership Development, NCLR Workforce Development Forum, and Training Industry Magazine’s Webinar Series.
Brad Peirce
Brad is a certified ICF-trained Executive Leadership Coach from Georgetown's Institute for Transformational Leadership.
His approach to coaching is grounded in the wisdom of nature and based on the belief that we are all fundamentally whole, creative, intelligent, resourceful, and talented human beings; highly knowledgeable about the nature of our own personal and professional development.
He is an expert on regenerative leadership that is rooted in an understanding of how living systems learn, evolve, change, and remain resilient and sustainable.
Brad is based in Maine; Learn more about him at www.bradpeirce.com.
Michal Klau-Stevens
Michal is a clinical social worker who specializes in trauma treatment for women. She is Master Certified in Accelerated Resolution Therapy and is certified in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy through the Integrative Psychiatry Institute.
Michal is based in West Hartford, Connecticut; learn more about her at www.azure-psychotherapy.com
Cristin Talentino
Cristin Talentino (she/her) is a facilitator, guide, and founder of Birch + Bloom, a Northern Ontario–based gathering practice rooted in trust, relationship, and belonging. Her work integrates leadership development, dialogue, grief, and nature-based learning to foster clarity, connection, and renewal in complex times.
With more than twenty years of experience in leadership, communications, and community engagement, Cristin has designed and led initiatives across multiple sectors. Known for creating spaces that encourage honest reflection, creativity, and meaningful conversation, she supports others in developing the self-awareness and relational capacity essential for navigating through complexity.
Cristin’s passion for embodiment and nature as practices for healing and transformation is informed by her personal journey navigating through deep seasons of loss. Out of these experiences, Birch + Bloom emerged as a gathering practice grounded in belonging, relationship and trust, and the understanding that true leadership begins within.
Through her signature Birch Circle framework, Cristin guides individuals and groups in exploring values, presence, belief, creativity, and belonging as pathways to growth and coherence.
She lives on the traditional lands of the Anishinabek Peoples in Northern Ontario, Canada, where the changing seasons continue to inform her work. Cristin brings a steady, thoughtful presence to every space she facilitates, helping others connect to themselves, each other, and the wider world with purpose and meaning. Learn more about her at www.birchandbloom.ca