Amina Knowlan, MS

Founder & Director

Amina founded Matrix Leadership Institute, LLC in 1990. She has been designing and facilitating groups and trainings for 30 plus years. She also offers team, executive and life coaching to individuals, partnerships and teams. Prior to founding MLI, she was an owner and practitioner in Wellspring, Partners in Health for 15 years, serving on the executive team for 10 years. She was a trainer for the Hakomi Institute of Body-Centered Psychotherapy for 15 years, serving on their Executive Board for 2 years. In her early career, Amina was the Director of Outreach Programming for the Counseling Center at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Her formal background includes training from the National Training Laboratories for the Behavioral Sciences in group and organizational development, as well as an M.S. in Counseling and Teaching Psychology at the University of Missouri. She was also trained in Gestalt Therapy and was a certified Hakomi Therapist and trainer.

She is currently in the final phase of completing a book on Matrix Leadership. She is passionate about creating new models of leadership and group life in organizations and communities that move beyond hierarchical and mechanistic assumptions of separateness, to realize functional interconnection and support sustainable life on earth.

Her recent organizational clients include small, medium and large corporate businesses; healthcare organizations; city governments; schools and non-profits. She also works internationally in partnership with the Institute for Coaching in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 2011 Amina was a featured campus speaker on leadership at Western Washington University.

In community-based contexts she incorporates dance, movement, voice, art, mindfulness and awareness of the sacred. She is inspired by exploring the natural world; by swimming outdoors year-round; and by creative expression including singing, dancing, photography, writing poetry and the art of healthy, gourmet cooking. Amina has two adult children and lives in the beautiful mountain foothills of Boulder, Colorado.