Physician Coaching Experts

Dr. Robyn Tiger

Robyn Tiger, MD, is a physician, trauma-informed self-care coach, podcaster and founder of StressFreeMD. She is deeply passionate about teaching physicians how to be stress-free from the inside out. Dr. Tiger utilizes her unique combination of trainings in medicine, yoga therapy, iRest® meditation & life coaching to educate physicians in stress management, burnout prevention and relief. Her innovative teachings focus on complete physical, mental and emotional well-being and resilience. Dr. Tiger’s CME accredited signature program, Rx Inner Peace, contains the most effective evidence-based self-care methods compiled from several years of providing physician education. She hosts the StressFreeMD Podcast and enjoys sharing weekly short, effective and informative “stress-free snacks”. Her deep commitment to helping physicians grew out of her many years in medical practice experiencing and witnessing firsthand the need for physician self-care education.

Dr. Melissa Parsons

Melissa Parsons, MD, practiced pediatrics from 2002-2021, working for both Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio and in private practice at Emerald Pediatrics in Dublin, Ohio. After personally working with Katrina Ubell and Maggie Reyes, both fabulous life coaches, she decided to pursue life coaching as a second career. Melissa completed her training through The Life Coach School in 2020, and started her own business that same year. Melissa enjoys coaching women one on one to create amazing relationships with themselves! Her business has been so successful that she made the decision to retire from pediatrics in April 2021. She is currently pursuing an advanced certification with Bev Aron, one of her coaching idols! She lives in Westerville with her husband Jon Parsons, MD, a Professor of Pulmonary/Critical Care at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Together they have teenage two sons, Jack and Owen, and a labradoodle named Barney Stinson.

Dr. Arpita Gupta DePalma

Arpita Gupta DePalma, MD, practiced pediatrics from 2002-2012 in Richmond, Virginia after completing residency at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. In 2010, she co-founded Virginia iSpine Physicians (VISP) and became the Practice Administrator, where her husband, Michael J. DePalma, MD, serves as medical director. Arpita chose to take a step away from clinical pediatrics in 2012 to spend time with her young daughter and son (now 18yo and 15yo) and later established Peds Proxy, MD in 2018, to offer prn locums coverage to pediatric practices in her geographic area. She learned about professional life coaching from conversations with her residency colleague, Melissa Parsons, MD, and began to experience its benefits after having to grapple with the realities of temporarily closing ViSP for 2 months early in the pandemic. With the encouragement of her spouse, Arpita immersed herself in the winter 2021 cohort of EWP, founded her coaching business, Thought Work, MD, in February of 2021, and became certified with The Life Coach School in October of 2021. She offers general mindset coaching to women professionals and specializes in anger and time management, self-worth, and perfectionism issues. In her spare time, Arpita loves to travel with her husband and 2 children, Sarina and Nikhil, play with their 2 dogs, Buckeye and Zara, work on her photography and appreciate the new perspectives she has gained in her own life from coaching.

Dr. Amelia L. Bueche

Amelia L. Bueche, D.O. is a specialist in Neuromusculoskeletal Medicine and Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine, nurturing health and empowering patients to realize their amazing inherent capacity. Dr. Bueche founded This Osteopathic Life to expand the understanding and application of osteopathic philosophy beyond the clinical setting, ultimately serving as guiding principles for a cultural revolution grounded in love and humanity. Dr Bueche is a leader of coaches and a coach of leaders, serving as Chair of Coaching for AMWA IGNITE and is the founder of Coaching For Institutions - Bringing Health to Medicine. She specializes in design and facilitation of coaching programs for physicians at all stages of education, training and practice, helping them unleash their inner potential to develop immunity to burnout and find success in any situation.

Dr. Latifat Akintade

Dr Latifat is a practicing Gastroenterologist & mama of three little ladies. She is also the founder of MoneyFitMD, a platform where she helps hardworking women physicians that feel financially disempowered transform into their empowered money badass self. She combines financial education and money coaching together. She believes that when women physicians have true financial freedom, we can create lives that is full of impact, legacy and richness. Her dream is that women will have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on their own terms. You can find her talking all things money and mindset on The MoneyFitMD podcast or in her money school for badass women physicians.

Dr. Bonnie Koo

Bonnie Koo, MD is certified life coach, physician and founder of Wealthy Mom MD. She is a proud graduate of Barnard College and Columbia University's College of Physicians & Surgeons. Her mission is to help women create wealth and rewrite history. She is the host of the Wealthy Mom MD Podcast and author of Defining Wealth for Women: (n.) Peace, Purpose, and Plenty of Cash! debuting Fall 2021.

Dr. Jessie Mahoney

Dr. Mahoney is the founder of Pause and Presence where she supports who are successful on the surface yet struggle underneath through mindful coaching. She specializes in easing struggles with relationships, parenting, career transitions, and burnout. Dr. Mahoney was a pediatrician and physician wellness leader at The Permanente Medical Group/Kaiser Permanente for 17 years. She is an Assistant Volunteer Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at UCSF and chair of the San Francisco Marin Medical Society Physician Wellness Task Force. She is co-host of the Mindful Healers Podcast and a leader of the Mindful Healthcare Collective. She is a certified yoga instructor and teaches yoga on zoom and Youtube as well as at retreats and conferences around the world. She offers a special brand of “mindful yoga” for healers as a nourishing gift for mind, body, and spirit.

Dr. Ana Blake 

Ana Blake, MD, is a rural family physician, mom of two daughters, outdoor enthusiast and physician coach specializing in burnout recovery and prevention. She started her company, The Antifragile Female MD, to help female physicians struggling with exhaustion, overwhelm, harsh self-criticism, impostor syndrome, and regret over their career choice.

Ana's experience with burnout began in 2019 when she burned out after having her first child. Coaching helped her stop working nights and weekends, end the constant pressure she put on herself to do it all, and enjoy her patient interactions again. She never anticipated teaching becoming a coach, but recovering from burnout was such a life-changing experience that she found herself compelled to become part of changing the culture of medicine from the ground up.

Dr. Kristi Angevine

Kristi Angevine, MD, FACOG is a board certified Ob/Gyn and certified life coach. In her coaching practice, she specializes in helping high achieving women change unhelpful habits into intentional ones so they can find true self confidence. Whether it’s perfectionism, overthinking, second guessing, people pleasing, or chronically rushing, she helps them unpack the root causes. She has a natural warmth that helps all of her clients feel at ease and have fun while they work on mindset. In addition to certification through The Life Coach School, she is also an Advanced Certified Deep Dive Coach. Her love of teaching is clear: she guides clients to apply simple, evidence based tools and concepts to create radical and lasting changes, so they can feel better and focus on what matters most.

Dr. Kemia Sarraf

Dr. Kemia Sarraf (or “Dr. K” as she is most often known) completed her Medical Degree and Master of Public Health at the University of Utah School of Medicine, and her residency in Internal Medicine at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, Washington University School of Medicine. The arc of her 2+ decade career has included medical practice, public health programming and development, nonprofit leadership, multiple board positions in both the public and private sector, DEI and trauma-mitigation work in medical education, and private business ownership.
Currently, she is the CEO of Lodestar Consulting & Executive Coaching. Her group provides subspecialty coaching for physicians at crossroads or crisis, culture-change consultation in healthcare and other institutions, and offers the only ICF accredited trauma-responsive master coach training program in the U.S.. Additionally, Dr. K serves as adjunct faculty at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in the office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, and nationally as a lead facilitator for the ACGME Equity Matters initiative.
Kemia is an authentic, compelling storyteller, a powerful keynote speaker, and the recipient of numerous awards for her leadership, work, vision, and communication. She and her physician-husband have been married for more than twenty years, and the two live on a small working farm in Central Illinois with their four sons and "too many critters to count."

Dr. Tonya Caylor

Tonya L Caylor, MD, FAAFP is a family physician and certified professional coach in Anchorage, Alaska. She works as an external coach with family medicine residents, faculty, and early career physicians to enjoy their lives and thrive in their chosen careers. After 22 years of clinical practice, she recently transitioned to a fill-in position with her current outpatient clinic and remains on-call faculty at the Alaska Family Medicine Residency. She has worked with various residency programs over the past 18 months finding ways to make quality coaching accessible to the incubators of primary care in order to empower them with clarity, confidence, and joy that will span a lifetime.

Dr. Sonia Wright

Dr. Sonia Wright is a board-certified radiologist, a sexual counselor and a life coach. She received her education from Stanford University, the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, the Mayo Clinic and the University of Michigan. She is on a mission to help women embrace their sexuality as well as end the emotional pain and isolation associated with sexual difficulties. She believes wholeheartedly that all women deserve to experience pleasurable sexual intimacy.

Dr. Wright has a natural ability to put people at ease while discussing sensitive issues related to sex. She enjoys combining this natural ability with her medical knowledge, sexual counseling skills and life coaching tools to create her unique brand of sex coaching. She tackles the hard issues by normalizing the situation and sharing helpful information, while coaching from a caring and humorous perspective.

Dr. Wright will inspire your audience to view sexuality and sexual intimacy as a normal part of life. She will also help your audience to understand sexual difficulties happen and should be addressed without shame.

Dr. Payal Patel Ghayal

Payal Patel Ghayal, MD is certified life and parent coach for women physicians and an integrative pediatrician. She helps women to start advocating for themselves, and experience greater fulfillment and happiness. Payal received her coach training at The Life Coach School and is currently working with women of all backgrounds looking to meld two cultures to create their own identity. She truly enjoys coaching women of color who identify as first or second generation Americans.

Payal is a board certified pediatrician and integrative medicine trained through the Andrew Weil Center of Integrative Medicine.

She currently lives in Los Angeles with physician husband and two active boys.

Dr. Riva Kamat

Dr. Riva Kamat is the Founder and CEO of Lotus Coaching and Consulting, a physician wellness company. She is a practicing pediatric hospitalist at Inova Children’s Hospital in Falls Church, Virginia and a physician coach. With over 20 years of experience within an academic and community practice, she has learned to cope with the ups and downs of medicine. She is the Vice Chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Section of Hospital Medicine, Provider Wellness Subcommittee and the Chair of the Virginia American Academy of Pediatrics, Provider Wellness Committee. She is a certified professional coach and enjoys coaching attendings, residents, medical students and pre-med students on a wide range of topics such as imposter syndrome to setting boundaries.
She also serves as the Director of the Division of Organizational Coaching Programs for the Institute for Physician Wellness (IPW) and has co-developed Vital Alliance™. Vital Alliance™ is a CME physician wellness product which provides lectures followed by interactive personal and group coaching by certified physician coaches. https://www.instituteforphysicianwellness.com/vital-alliance/

Dr. Miriam Rhew

Miriam Rhew, MD, MPH is a general pediatrician and certified life coach, trained by The Life Coach School. She is currently the medical director at UBCP - Bancroft Pediatrics where she has worked for 20 years. She serves a diverse pediatric patient community in Northern California and practices trauma informed care. She also practices trauma informed coaching with Empowering Women Physicians and Coaching for Institutions with a special interest in coaching women physicians who also identify as 1st and 2nd generation Americans. She aims to give her clients space to share their unique stories, identify their inner resilience and strengths, and intentionally curate the lives they desire. She can be reached by email at [email protected]

Dr. Nora Vasquez

Dr. Nora Vasquez is a Certified Physician Coach, the founder of Renew Your Mind MD and a Board-Certified Internal Medicine Physician with over a decade of experience. She uses high performance coaching to help doctors create an empowered mindset to better manage the stress of practicing modern medicine. She also coaches medical groups at hospitals and medical institutions on overcoming burnout, imposter syndrome, perfectionism, spirituality, healing relationships, time management and leadership mindset. Her mission is to “Heal the Healers” and help her clients achieve their personal and professional goals. Her physician coaching programs empower clients to create the clarity, peace and blueprint to thrive. You can learn more about Dr. Vasquez at www.renewyourmindmd.com

Dr. Sunny Smith

Sunny Smith MD is the Founder and CEO of Empowering Women Physicians, a multi-million dollar coaching business which places her in the top 2% of female entrepreneurs in the United States. Dr. Smith is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. She advocates for physician wellness through her comprehensive and collaborative coaching program, podcast, retreats and facebook group that seek to change the culture of medicine through normalizing and humanizing the experience of being a physician. She has been featured in multiple documentaries on medical student and physician wellness including Do No Harm which is currently streaming on Amazon. Dr. Smith is the recipient of multiple teaching awards including Humanism in Medicine, Excellence in Teaching, and Outstanding Community Leader award. Her work has been published in many peer-reviewed journals including JAMA.

Dr. Mary Ann Orzech

Dr. Mary Ann Orzech helps healthcare professionals, executives and organizations increase patient safety, improve collaboration and develop leaders and teams that build an environment of trust and purpose-based human connection.
Dr Orzech started her career in the United States Air Force, completing 28 years of service that included 8 years flying in the backseat of an F-16 as a flight surgeon. Aviation safety is of paramount importance to the military flying community and many of those same principles of aviation safety have been adopted by the medical community to help diagnose and prevent healthcare system safety issues. Today, Dr Orzech applies her F.L.I.G.H.T. Leadership Model to healthcare organizations to help them build a medical safety culture that allows each organization a safe landing, while supporting the health of its patients.
Throughout her career, Dr. Orzech has seen how the changes in the medical field have increased the importance of collaboration and team-based, patient-centered care. She thrives on working with physicians and other healthcare leaders to develop the leadership skills they need to excel in this healthcare environment and flourish in these new roles.
Dr. Orzech is also a certified Rooftop Leadership coach who trains and coaches healthcare providers on purpose-based human connection skills. 

Dr. Tricia James

Tricia James is an academic Internal Medicine physician who is still practicing inpatient and outpatient medicine in addition to teaching medical students and residents. She has also been a leader in wellness initiatives in her instution for the last decade. She has most recently brought coaching to providers on the front lines of COVID to help them individually adopt self care and reconnect with their power, but also to help provide clarity around the highest yield system interventions needed.

Dr. Marion Mull McCrary

Dr Marion Mull McCrary is a practicing primary care internal medicine physician and a national board-certified health and wellness coach. She is passionate about physician wellness. She serves as the Well-Being Champion for the North Carolina chapter of the American College of Physicians and as a Physician Coach for the American College of Physicians and AMWA ELEVATE. She is the founder of Marion McCrary Wellness.

Dr. Kristin Yates

Kristin Yates is a Board Certified Ob/Gyn practicing in New Hampshire. She almost quit medicine soon after residency due to the burden of imposter syndrome and lack of clear career goals. Today, she continues to practice full time and is also a Life Coach for women physicians early in their careers who are being held back by self doubt. She enjoys reading, playing with her 3 young daughters and traveling with her husband.