Laura Colket(she/her)

Dr. Laura Colket is a scholar-practitioner, educational leader, and somatic coach who helps leaders reconnect with themselves so they can lead with greater alignment and impact. She thinks of leadership broadly — not as a title or position, but as the capacity anyone has to influence, guide, and create change, whether in a boardroom, a classroom, a family, or a community. Her work is grounded in a simple belief: leaders can’t sustainably create healthy, thriving environments for others if they’re running on empty themselves.

Drawing on somatic awareness, mindfulness, creativity, and play, Dr. Colket works with clients to build practices that help them lead from a place of connection rather than disconnection and burnout. Her goal isn’t to help people perform leadership better — it’s to help them become better, more whole versions of themselves, in ways that ripple out into every part of their personal and professional lives.

This work is rooted in over 20 years of experience spanning primary, secondary, nonprofit, and higher education across the globe. A Fulbright Specialist with a Master’s and Doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, she brings deep expertise in leadership development, faculty development, and experiential education, along with firsthand knowledge of what it takes to lead through complexity, uncertainty, and institutional change — including guiding organizations through high-stakes transitions while holding fast to values of equity, justice, and human dignity.

As a qualitative researcher and co-founder of the Center for Research on Storytelling in Education, she also brings a deep appreciation for the power of narrative in transformation — how the stories we tell about ourselves and our work can either keep us stuck or set us free. Her published work, including the edited volume Becoming: Transformative Storytelling for Education’s Future, explores this terrain in depth.

Currently based in Ithaca, NY, Dr. Colket is completing her forthcoming book, Leaders as Healers: The Courage to Humanize Higher Education. Whether through one-on-one coaching or group programs, her approach is holistic and embodied — designed to help individuals reconnect with their bodies, their creativity, and their sense of purpose, so they can build lives and organizations where people truly thrive.