Amina Knowlan, MS

Founder, Director, Trainer, Facilitator, Consultant, Coach, Social Architect

Amina is founder of the Matrix Leadership Institute and has been designing and facilitating groups and trainings for 30 plus years. 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 to support sustainable life on earth. She is currently in the final phase of completing a book on Matrix Leadership–The Architecture of InterConnection–a comprehensive guide to creating groups and organizations that function as living systems with a relational infrastructure(™).

She offers team, executive, and life coaching to individuals, partnerships, and teams. Her coaching clients benefit from her systems’ awareness and strategic thinking with a relational foundation, and holistic (whole person) approaches. She works closely with colleagues, Gerald Boyd and Ling Thio to offer a Matrix Diversity training, “Creating a Culture of Allies,” which focuses on moving beyond trauma into connected allyship and action to reduce systemic barriers to equity, belonging and justice.

Her organizational clients have included small, medium, and large corporate businesses; healthcare organizations; city governments; schools and non-profits. She currently partners with Nick Osborne from the UK to deliver online training in Matrix Leadership in Evolving Collective Leadership. In recent years, she has worked internationally in partnership with the Institute for Coaching in St. Petersburg, Russia; with companies and non-profits, in Australia (collaborating with Alison Tsao, Humans Who Lead) Singapore, the Netherlands, and London.

Prior to founding the Matrix Institute, she had a rich history of working in various therapeutic settings including the Wellspring Partners in Health program,, serving as a trainer for the Hakomi Institute of Body Centered Psychotherapy and as 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 inspired by exploring the natural world, swimming outdoors year-round, and hiking with her dog. She enjoys creative expression including singing, salsa dancing, photography, writing poetry, gardening, and the art of healthy, gourmet cooking. Amina lives in the beautiful mountain foothills of Boulder, Colorado, with two adult children and three grandchildren. She is deeply committed to creating life with a beautifully connected extended family of co-parents, stepchildren, and their families.