MEET

Michal Fox Smart

Michal Fox Smart is an award-winning author and educator, as well as a senior leadership facilitator and executive Coach. She has pioneered work at the nexus of personal, spiritual, and professional development for over 30 years.

Michal loves to help clients access Torah that is personally meaningful, and to explore practices which can support their well-being and communal leadership and belonging. She draws upon a wealth of diverse resources, including cutting edge leadership theory, mindfulness and mussar, traditional Jewish texts, ritual and spirituality, and the living world around us. Michal meets clients where they are, honors their past experience and curiosity, and supports a learning journey that is emergent and bespoke. As a result, clients are better equipped to show up as fully resourced, inspired, best versions of themselves.

Michal is trained in trauma-informed coaching and consulting, Jewish mindfulness meditation and Nonviolent Communication. Her prized book Kaddish: Women’s Voices, explores the diverse ways people experience loss and recovery, and the powerful role that ritual, prayer, and community can play in healing. Earlier, Michal pioneered the field of Jewish outdoor and environmental education in the U.S., and she delights in re-introducing Judaism as an Earth-based religion.

A Fulbright scholar in Jewish Thought, Michal earned degrees from Princeton and Cornell and is also an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship and Pardes. She has served professionally and supported leaders in schools, synagogues, camps and retreat centers, JCC’s, and diverse non-profit organizations (most recently IJS). Michal lives in Stamford, CT and is the proud Ema of five young adults, each deliciously different.