SHE Leads: Coaching

MAGAZINE

6 Perks

CANADA

OF HIRING A

COACH

Quiz CHECK UP

from the

NECK UP

TAKE THE

LEAP “FIND YOUR PERFECT MATCH: DISCOVER THE RIGHT COACH TO UNLEASH YOUR POTENCIAL”

Karen Wonders

LALUZ

CONSULTING INC.

BRAINWAVE

STUCK? " BRAINSTORMING TEAM FOR HIRE “

02

INTRO finding your fit

A Guide to the Diverse World of Coaching for Women

MAGAZINE

"To develop personally, we must first understand ourselves. Self-awareness is the foundation upon which we build our potential."

03

MAGAZINE

TABLE OF CONTENTS This edition of SHE explores the realm of coaching.

04

"Unlocking Potential: "

07

Six Perks of Hiring a Coach

Discover the Transformative Benefits of Hiring a Coach!

Accountability and Motivation Skill Development

09

13

LALUZ Consulting Inc An Engineer's Path Into Leadership

Assessing Your Needs .

START HERE

6

04

UNLOCKING POTENTIAL: PERKS OF HIRING A COACH

In today's fast-paced and often This is where coaching comes overwhelming world, the quest into play—a transformative for personal and professional partnership that can unlock growth can feel daunting. your potential and propel you Whether you're striving to toward your goals. advance in your career, improve your health, or "Coaching is unlocking a person’s enhance your relationships, potential to maximize their growth."

Maxwell the journey can be filled with obstacles and uncertainties.

03

01

MAGAZINE

SIX PERKS OF HIRING A COACH

6

One of the primary benefits of hiring a coach is the personalized guidance they offer. Unlike generic self-help resources, a coach tailors their

approach to your unique situation, strengths, and aspirations. They take

the time to understand your challenges and goals, creating a customized roadmap that leads to success. This individualized support can be

invaluable, as it provides clarity and direction, helping you to navigate your path with confidence.

02

ACCOUNTABILITY AND MOTIVATION

Another significant perk of working with a coach is the accountability they provide. It’s easy to set goals but much harder to stay committed to them, especially when faced with distractions or setbacks. A coach acts as a motivator and accountability partner, regularly checking in on your progress and encouraging you to stay focused. This external accountability can be a powerful catalyst for action, pushing you to take the necessary steps toward achieving your objectives

03

SKILL DEVELOPMENT Coaches are not just guides; they are also educators. Many coaching practices focus on skill development, whether it's enhancing leadership abilities, improving communication skills, or mastering time management. Through targeted exercises and feedback, a coach can help you build the skills necessary to excel in your personal and professional life. This learning process can lead to long-lasting improvements that extend beyond the coaching relationship.

04

Overcoming Limiting Beliefs

Often, the biggest barriers to achieving our goals are the limiting beliefs we hold about ourselves. A skilled coach helps you identify these mental blocks and challenges you to rethink them. By fostering a growth mindset, a coach enables you to reframe your perspective, embrace new possibilities, and cultivate resilience. This shift in mindset can be transformative, allowing you to pursue your goals with renewed vigor and confidence. .

6

Enhanced Self-Awareness

05

Self-awareness is a critical component of personal growth. Coaches use various techniques, such as reflective questioning and feedback, to help you gain deeper insights into your behaviors, values, and motivations.

This enhanced self-awareness empowers you to make informed decisions, align your actions with your values, and ultimately live a more authentic and fulfilling life. .

Robyn Priest: LIVE YOUR TRUTH

SUPPORTIVE 06 PARTNERSHIP Lastly, hiring a coach

With a coach by your side,

means entering into a

you’re not alone on your

supportive partnership.

journey; you have a

Coaches create a safe

trusted ally committed to

space for you to express

your success.

your thoughts, fears, and

INVESTING IN judgment. This supportive A COACH IS environment can foster INVESTING IN vulnerability and honesty, YOURSELF. allowing for deeper aspirations without

exploration and growth.

03

MAGAZINE

From the Factory Floor to the Founder's Chair: Karen Wonders Is Redefining Leadership Coaching A SHE Leads Magazine Profile

There's a particular kind of clarity that comes from spending two decades solving problems where the stakes are real — where a miscalculation isn't just a bad quarter, it's a production line that stops.

That clarity is exactly what Karen Wonders brings to the leaders she coaches today.

Karen is the founder of LALUZ Consulting, a Toronto-based executive coaching and leadership development practice built for a specific kind of leader: the technical expert who has been promoted into people leadership and is now expected to navigate influence, communication, and strategy — skills nobody taught them in engineering school.

LALUZ

CONSULTING INC.

An Engineer's Path Into Leadership Before she was coaching executives, Karen was living the exact tension she now helps her clients untangle. With more than 20 years in operational leadership as an engineer, she rose through roles where technical mastery was the price of entry but not the whole job.

Somewhere along the way, the real differentiator stopped being how well she understood the system and became how well she could lead the people inside it.

That transition — from being the smartest person in the room on a technical problem to being the person who has to align a team, manage up, and drive strategy — is one Karen says is rarely given the attention it deserves.

Engineering and tech organizations are exceptional at developing technical skill and remarkably inconsistent at developing the leadership skill that has to come next.

She went on to earn an Executive MBA from the University of Toronto and became a Certified Executive Coach through the Rotman School of Management, pairing the analytical rigor of her engineering background with a formal grounding in coaching methodology. It's an unusual combination, and it's become her signature:

A coach who speaks the language of operations and strategy as fluently as she speaks the language of human development.

“from being the smartest person in the room on a technical problem to being the person who has to align a team, manage up, and drive strategy”

Building LALUZ: "The Light" In 2023, Karen founded LALUZ Consulting — named for the Spanish word for "the light" — on a simple but demanding premise: that the most powerful answers a leader needs already exist within them, and that a coach's job is to be a clear, honest mirror rather than a source of prescriptions.

Based in Oakville, Ontario, LALUZ now works with three distinct groups of leaders: engineering and technical experts stepping into people leadership, entrepreneurs who are buried in the day-to-day of running their own businesses, and professionals standing at a career crossroads who need help cutting through the noise to find direction. As the practice has grown, Karen has brought in coaches — including former Vice President of Talent Management Kristine Lalonde — who share her commitment to structure, care, and measurable results.

The firm operates on five guiding principles that spell out its name: Learning, Inspiration, Growth, Harmony, and Trust. It's a framework that sounds aspirational until you see it applied — Karen's coaching style is notably unsentimental. Clients don't leave sessions with vague affirmations; they leave with practical, actionable steps grounded in the same logical rigor she once applied to engineering problems.

Why Her Story Matters for Women in Leadership Karen's path is a useful case study for any woman weighing whether to leave a stable, senior technical career to build something of her own. She didn't abandon her engineering identity to become a coach — she built her coaching practice on top of it, treating her operational experience as a credential rather than something to leave behind.

That matters, particularly in industries like engineering and tech where women remain underrepresented in senior leadership.

Karen's own memberships — with organizations including the Canadian Women's Chamber of Commerce, the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, and Women in Technology networks — reflect a career spent deliberately staying connected to the communities of women navigating similar terrain.

Her message to the leaders she works with, and arguably to any woman eyeing a leap of her own, is one of trust: trust the expertise you've already built, and don't assume that switching lanes means starting from zero.

What’s NEXT LALUZ continues to expand its reach through 1-on-1 executive coaching, leadership workshops, and speaking engagements, with Karen and her team regularly running sessions for technical leaders looking to strengthen their presence and influence. For a founder who spent 20 years making sure systems ran without failure, she's now in the business of making sure the people running those systems don't burn out trying to lead them.

It's a fitting second act — and one very much still being written.

To learn more about Karen Wonders and LALUZ Consulting, visit laluzconsulting.org.