About MettaWorks

Rachel is a Columbia University certified executive coach with over a decade of coaching experience. She sets her practice apart by drawing from both traditional and alternative modalities, including Somatic Experiencing, Polarity Therapy, Zen Buddhism, Inner Relationship Focusing, and antiracism. Her aim is to see, hear, and feel a client’s needs with utmost clarity in order to bring about profound, lasting, and measurable results.  

Rachel also draws from firsthand in-house leadership experience, first as Bloomberg’s HR Business Partner responsible for developing and coaching leaders and teams, and then in charge of leadership coaching at AppNexus (since acquired by AT&T) and Digital Ocean, the third-largest hosting company in the world.

It was in these roles that she began to develop the modalities that underpin the MettaWorks method. And it was one instance in particular that motivated her to launch her own coaching practice. Early in her career, she was in charge of laying off 60 long time colleagues – face to face. Deeply conflicted, she did the only thing she could think to do: she went inward, and attended to her own sense of conflict, and made space for the task at hand, which she carried out with empathy, and attention. 

The results were clear, and so was the path forward. After earning her executive coaching certification through Columbia University, Rachel founded MettaWorks in 2015.  

Since then, she has completed a three-year intensive certification in Somatic Experiencing.She has also received training in Polarity Therapy. She continues her decades-long meditation practice with Shugen Arnold Roshi, successor to Zen Mountain Monastery founder John Daido Loori Roshi.

As a very important part of her ongoing growth and study, Rachel works with antiracism coach, Makeda Pennycooke. This work is vital to what MettaWorks offers, ensuring she continues to closely examine the racism that lives within her and challenge white thinking she may be bringing to the coaching she provides and the company she runs.

Alison is an International Coaching Federation credentialed coach who draws on years of firsthand experience. Alison’s coaching is uniquely informed by her professional experiences as a corporate executive and an entrepreneur. She also has her MBA from NYU Stern School of Business. Alison is Certified in Positive Psychology and Happiness Studies from Harvard University, versed in the neurobiology of stress and the neuroscience of change. Alison is also trained in Somatic Experiencing which emphasizes self regulation of the nervous system.  Alison’s holistic approach to coaching is science-backed and whole-body focused.

Before becoming an Executive Coach, Alison spent 15 years working at IBM and Pepsi-Cola in marketing, strategic planning, and finance. She was happily married with two kids, and about to renovate a dream home when the script flipped. Her husband was offered a temporary position abroad. Alison left her job and moved with her family for what was supposed to be a short-term post in Brazil and turned out to be a nearly two-decades-long shuffle. Alison found herself struggling to keep up with the logistics of relocation, caring for aging parents from a distance, moving kids between school districts and parenting one with learning differences – all of which was compounded by the onset of chronic pain, headaches, and anxiety attacks. 

After a decade of fighting fear and stress, Alison decided it was time to address the way she reacted to stressors rather than the stressors themselves. By going inward, she was able to reframe her circumstances and leverage the power of the brain’s neuroplasticity, and it made all the difference. She wanted everyone to know how profound and real her results were. So, Alison went back to school to learn the science of well-being.

Studying positive psychology under Harvard Professor Dr. Tal Ben Shahar at the Wholebeing Institute, Alison was tapped to be a teaching assistant for the newly launched Happiness Studies Academy. She has since coached entrepreneurs and leaders across industries, first exclusively through a private practice and later alongside Rachel Rider, at MettaWorks.

Alison asks powerful questions that draw out her client’s inherent wisdom while also sharing science-backed strategies that lead to lasting behavioral change.  Appreciating that insight alone cannot sustain positive transformation, she marries mindset shifts to actionable plans, behavioral changes and concrete leadership skills resulting in profound results for her clients. 

Alison has coached leaders at companies ranging in size from 200 to 200,000 such as Okta, Catalyst, Facebook, Workday, Amazon, Box, Capital One, Visa, Google.

Alison does her own antiracism work as well, attending MettaWorks’ bi-annual antiracism training as well as her own self study and extensive reading.