About Sarah Ciavarri
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Sarah knows what it means to care deeply about work that asks a lot of you.
For more than 25 years, Sarah Ciavarri has worked alongside people who care deeply about what they do—leaders who want to serve people well, make a difference, and leave things better than they found them.
She knows the kind of leader who takes that responsibility seriously. Who keeps thinking about the problem after the meeting ends. Who wants to get it right. Who says yes because the work matters—and sometimes carries more than anyone realizes.
Sarah also knows what can happen when caring deeply turns into carrying too much.
She has watched remarkable leaders give more and more of themselves to work they believe in until the cost begins showing up somewhere else—in their energy, their relationships, their health, their joy, or simply their capacity to keep doing the work they once loved.
And it has shaped a question at the heart of Sarah's work:
How do we help leaders do meaningful work—and have a meaningful life, too?
A DIFFERENT KIND OF LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE
Sarah learned about leadership in places where the stakes were deeply human.
Earlier in her career, Sarah served as a pastor and healthcare chaplain, spending years alongside people navigating illness, loss, uncertainty, conflict, and some of life's hardest decisions.
The work taught her how to stay present when emotions run high, listen when there isn't a solution to offer, and build trust with people whose experiences, beliefs, and perspectives may be very different from her own.
Later, as a healthcare executive, Sarah experienced another side of caring deeply: leading people, navigating organizational change, making difficult decisions, and carrying responsibility for both the people and the work.
Those experiences still shape how Sarah thinks about leadership today.
Because leadership isn't just about knowing what to do. It's knowing how to be with people when things get hard.
WIRED TO BUILD WHAT’S NEXT
When the path doesn't exist, Sarah has a habit of building one.
Sarah has always had an entrepreneurial streak—and a willingness to figure things out as she goes.
She has built new programs, developed leadership curricula, brought emerging ideas into places they hadn't gone before, co-authored a proposal that secured a $1.25 million grant from Lilly Endowment, and independently written successful grants for another $60,000.
She was also an early facilitator of Brené Brown's research, creating opportunities to bring that work into new settings and audiences long before it became part of the mainstream leadership conversation.
Along the way, Sarah has written a book, built a coaching and speaking business, and reinvented her own career more than once.
And yes, together with her husband, Sarah even built her own house.
Maybe that's why Sarah believes so deeply in reinvention: she's experienced what can happen when we take the best of what brought us here and use it to build what's next.
WHERE IT ALL COMES TOGETHER
Everything Sarah has learned about leadership, built into one practical method.
Leadership can wear all of us down. Sarah knows that from her own experience.
She has cared deeply about doing good work, carried too much of it, lost perspective, run low on energy, and experienced burnout and compassion fatigue herself. And over more than 25 years of working with leaders, she's seen versions of the same thing happen to remarkably capable people.
There are seasons when the decisions pile up. When change keeps coming. When the people you're leading are exhausted and you're trying to support them while running on empty yourself. When you get reactive, lose perspective, or realize you've been carrying something that was never entirely yours to carry.
Even the most grounded leaders have experience overwhelmed, depleted, or knocked off course.
The key is how to find your way back.
Back to awareness when you're moving too fast to notice what's happening. Back to groundedness when stress and decision fatigue are taking over. Back to possibility when change has you holding tightly to what used to work. And back to connection when pressure makes it harder to really see—and be with—the people around you.
Those practices became the foundation of Spark Your ARRC™: Awareness, Regulation, Reinvention, and Connection.
Sarah hasn’t mastered these practices once and for all. They're practices she returns to every day—in her own leadership, her relationships, and her life.
We won't always be grounded. We won't always have perspective. We won't always show up the way we wanted to. But we can find our way back.
BEYOND THE BIO
Resourcefulness was part of growing up.
Sarah grew up on a North Dakota farm, where she had a front-row seat to her father's remarkable ability to build, fix, and figure things out. She was surrounded by people for whom resourcefulness, ingenuity, and making something work with what you had weren't exceptional qualities. They were simply part of how people lived.
Childhood came with ample opportunity to imagine and create. Square bales became forts. The hayloft had a rope swing. Railroad ties could be turned into a raft. That way of approaching the world has stayed with Sarah.
She still loves playing with ideas, seeing possibilities, making connections, and asking one of her favorite questions:
“What if?”
What if we looked at this differently? What if something we already have could be used in a new way? What if the path forward isn't obvious yet—but we can build it as we go?
Whether she's designing a leadership experience, solving a problem, building a new program, or helping leaders navigate change, Sarah brings that same spirit of resourcefulness and possibility to the work.
We can do good work and have some good fun doing it.
THE CREDENTIALS, IF YOU'RE CURIOUS
Study. Practice. Experience. Repeat.
Sarah is endlessly fascinated by people and human dynamics—what helps people thrive, how we create cultures where people are treated well, and how we have the honest, productive conversations that good work sometimes requires. She has spent years studying, practicing, teaching, coaching, and leading—and she’s still learning.
25+
Years studying, practicing, and teaching leadership
750+
Keynotes and workshops facilitated
1,400+
Hours of professional coaching
EDUCATION & CERTIFICATIONS
Sarah Ciavarri, M.Div., PCC, BCC, CRA, CDTLF
Professional Certified Coach (PCC) — International Coaching Federation
Board Certified Chaplain (BCC)
Master of Divinity (M.Div.)
Certified Reinvention Associate (CRA)
Certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator (CDTLF)
Additional certifications: DISC, Emotional Intelligence, and Motivators
WHY THIS WORK MATTERS
Helping leaders flourish so the people around them can flourish too.
Sarah believes leadership should make more possible—not only for organizations, but for the people doing the work.
That means helping leaders stay grounded when things get hard, adapt when the path forward isn't obvious, and build the kinds of relationships and cultures where people know they matter.
Because good leadership isn't only about what we accomplish. It's also about who we become—and what becomes possible for the people around us.
Your energy shapes how you lead. And how you lead shapes the energy around you.