Aliva Coaching, LLC is the creation of Mira Weisenthal, lover of absurdity, minutiae, and people. Mid-way through Mira’s non-linear career, she found herself an abject failure at leaning into the strengths she had always told herself would define her success — the skills she gained out of necessity and honed out of anxiety and which, decades in, she was still middling at… things like drafting RFPs, leading pitch calls, and simultaneously overseeing multiple complex projects with various stakeholders and diverse budgets, scopes, and timelines. (Oh my!)

This moment gave rise to acknowledgement of her true strengths — core coaching skills like being empathetic, listening deeply, and holding vast amounts of complex, conflicting information without judgment — as well as to the refreshingly naked truth that she had finally exhausted all other options and indeed had no choice but to dive into the unknown, turning toward the skills that had always come naturally and which had, if she was honest with herself, always felt kind of pointless.