Meet Our Founders

Kim Marie

Kim Marie is a Life and Leadership Mentor, trained as an Ontological Coach with Newfield Network in 2009. Coaching and mentorship serve as the perfect platform for Kim to blend her diverse background in the realms of corporate, military, non-profit, government, and small business cultures, with the work of human development, life/family/vocational balance, soul-making, and personal and professional leadership.

Kim’s passion for transformational learning and development is expressed through a unique blend of archetypal wisdom, character strengths, and habit breaking programs that empower individuals to break the chains of old patterns and conditioning, and become not only their best Selves, but also effective Leaders. The magic of this process is that they also become a true Self-Leader, confident in who they are, committed to what they value, and able to create meaningful change.

Through coaching, mentoring, speaking, writing and workshops, Kim helps individuals and groups cultivate the resilience and integrated relational work needed to meet today’s challenges. Her programs, inspirational talks and writings guide individuals and groups to have confidence and courage to navigate through what often seems like darkness and chaos toward clarity, collaboration and generative practices that truly make a difference.

Kim is the mother of two young adults, and is passionate about supporting them to move into the world with confidence and skill.

You can learn more on her website, www.KimMarieCoaching.com

Raluca Kannan

Raluca is a Newfield trained ontological life and leadership coach. She creates learning experiences that bring one closer to who they truly are.

She worked in alternative educational programs where she supported young adults to embrace the world with curiosity, trust and build meaningful relationships. The concepts of self-directed learning and creating a team culture, learned in the educational environments, influenced her approach in the corporate sector where as a coach she focuses on bringing joy and freedom at work.

Her background in different corporate settings (from start ups to big corporations) gave her the opportunity to reflect on how we generate results together with others while taking care of what motivates us. 

She deeply believes that the search for purpose and joy is a lifelong quest that drives us in every aspect of our life.

She is passionate about human development and connecting to our inner wisdom to overcome our fears and find hope.

As a mother and a coach, she is also supporting women to balance motherhood with other roles in their lives, and move away from shame and guilt to live in congruence with their own values and beliefs.

Learn more about Raluca at www.RalucaKannan.com

Our Inspiration for Creating Parzival Academy

Kim and Raluca are both trained Ontological Life & Leadership coaches. Their shared passion for our “way of being” (i.e. ontology) and for the wisdom of the human being (i.e. Anthroposophy), along with their longing to see an evolutionary path forward for our young adults, sparked the creation of Parzival Academy.

Both Kim and Raluca chose alternative education for their own children, not wanting them to be raised in the box of conventional education where students are rarely if ever shown how to build confidence in being who they’re uniquely here to be. Even in the alternative education they chose for their children, Waldorf education specifically, they found that some extremely important skills and understandings were missing in the curriculum. 

Waldorf high schooling offers a beautiful progression for students that culminates in exploring the question of  “Who am I?” in 12th grade. Yet students are often guided to head straight for some kind of higher education, career, trade school or other type of gap program without sincerely continuing to embody the response to that question such that they can go into the world without feeling trapped in a life of outer expectations, pressures and competition.

Parzival is a story by Wolfram Von Eschenbach about a youth who ventures into the world, naive yet ambitious and determined. Having been over-protected by his mother, and clueless about the ways of the world, he experiences many trials, makes many mistakes and discovers a great deal about himself and the world around him. 

Parzival is the quintessential hero/heroine/soul journey for every human being as they seek to know themselves and their place in the world. It’s a journey of unfolding, and Parzival Academy seeks to bring this unfolding to greater consciousness, allowing students to recognize themselves in connection with the greater world, gather the tools needed to meet the world effectively, and cultivate socio-entrepreneurial skills to create and express themselves while making a meaningful difference. 

“ Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
Steve Jobs
Founder, Apple Inc.

Step into a meaningful and successful future.

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