Andrea Shaw, PhD, MCC

If you are contemplating retirement, you may be optimistic and enthused about new possibilities or perhaps you’re feeling confused, vulnerable, and unsure of how to plan for it. Maybe you’re newly retired and things aren’t going as you thought they would. Wherever you are in this transition, I can help.

My work as a retirement coach is to support you in navigating this major life change. If you’re stopping work that gave you purpose, how can you establish new meaning now?

The transition to retirement brings an opportunity for a new stage of life-planning. If you’re in the third or fourth quarter of life, depending on your age of stopping work and reasons for it, you may be considering an array of factors. One of the most common challenges is leaving a structured work life and feeling dropped into a very unstructured one. You might need to develop new friendships and companionship if connection came from your job or children. Perhaps you are concerned about health changes? There are normal memory and energy shifts, even a new relationship with your body or a loved one’s health challenges illness. Whatever alteration has or may occur, we can use all these factors to your advantage. This next stage can be the best.

This coaching is a partnership dedicated to discovery and implementation of how you want to live and what you wish to do with your time. We will explore your concerns and what you’re looking for. We’ll work to uncover what is most important to you, what you value. Then we’ll create a path with goals to achieve the new direction.

In any transition, it can be difficult to know or choose where to go next, to feel safe acknowledging fears and doubts, perceived or real limitations, personal issues, and more. That’s where I come in. I am an attentive collaborator, witness and accountability partner. I work to be a wise listener and confidante, who offers well-delivered, straightforward feedback without judgment. I strive to work with clarity and efficiency.

Clients tell me that they feel deeply understood. They say I consistently find constructive suggestions for and positive angles hidden in their challenges, and from our work they feel stronger and clearer about how to direct and move into their future. Personal satisfaction, an increased sense of purpose, and stress reduction are generally some results of our work.

I have 22 years of experience coaching individual professionals as well as leaders up through C-Suite executives, and a sub-specialty with physicians. I work internationally providing expert coaching for career transition, retirement, and life-planning for people who to want to be intentional in creating new possibilities as they move into a new phase of life.

Since 2005, I’ve been a Master Certified Coach, the highest designation awarded by the International Coaching Federation, the organizing body for coaches worldwide. I began my career as a psychotherapist with a PhD in Clinical Psychology over 35 years ago. These two vocations—coaching and psychotherapy—provide me with a powerful complementary skill-set.
While helping is in my bones, it’s still an art. I use my psychology training as I listen, support, and invite curiosity in coaching. Our focus will be on what we can learn then putting that into action on your behalf.