Rev. Leslie A. Boies, M.A., has been a leadership development coach, facilitator, and teacher for over twenty-five years. Growing up in India, Lebanon, and Italy, she became an avid student of cultural diversity, languages, and varieties of religious expression at an early age. In the 1980’s, Leslie worked for The Ladakh Project, an international non-profit organization dedicated to promoting locally-based, sustainable alternatives to conventional development and the global consumer culture. This work included helping develop and disseminate educational programs in Ladakh, a Tibetan Buddhist region in Northern India,
It was the pervasive joyfulness and equanimity of the Ladakhi people which inspired Leslie to begin practicing Buddhism. She moved to Green Gulch Farm Zen Center and Tassajara Monastery, where she received the Buddhist precepts and was lay ordained by Tenshin Reb Anderson. Living in the daily rhythms of a spiritual community for three years allowed her to sink deep roots into her Zen practice—as well as to discern that her calling was to help integrate spirituality and healing into “the marketplace.” For the past ten years, she has coached and consulted to leaders and their teams at NCAL Kaiser Permanente Regional Offices. Her expertise is in the area of emotional intelligence and using mindfulness to transform moments of pain, competition, and confusion into insight, compassion, and right action.
Leslie earned a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Stanford University and an M.A. in Organizational Psychology from John F. Kennedy University. She periodically facilitates T-groups (training groups) at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business Interpersonal Dynamics program and has taught facilitation skills and group process at Holy Names College and John F. Kennedy University. In 2007, as a further expression of her Bodhisattva vows to “embrace and sustain all beings,” she was ordained as an Interfaith Minister at The Chaplaincy Institute. In addition to consulting at Kaiser, she currently provides spiritual coaching to individuals wishing to uncover and express their authentic spiritual nature.
