Karen Sands, MCC: The Everyday FuturistSM Your Ultimate Guide to the FutureSM Master Coach, Futurist, Strategist President, Future Works Institute

Download Profile in Word format
Download Profile in Text format
Printable Version of Profile

Coaching Today's Leaders of the Future to:

plan for What’s Next.
create more successful and significant tomorrows.
take a big picture view, so they stay ahead of the curve
leverage transitions for a greater future.
secure meaningful retirement.
build legacies that change the world.
apply reinvention principles that better lives.

Karen Sands, MCC, is a futurist, career strategist, business advisor and Master Certified Coach, whose Future Works Institute specializes in working with those who imagine a greater future.

Massive accelerated change is forcing us to move from our outmoded closed systems approach to one that is open, fluid and future-oriented. The new world model requires that each of us become a 'new thought leader and change agent: everyday futurists and visionary activists, who cultivate the soul, the character and the future in our work, in our communities and in our personal lives.

Karen believes the world is enriched when each of us answers our call to greatness. And greatness is not possible without facing the questions born from personal, as well as global, transition and transformation.

Reinvention is an act of greatness when it is in the service of our personal and professional higher good and the good of others. Each of us has the opportunity to express our Soul’s higher purpose by serving others through our gifts. That is greatness…and that is the call for today and tomorrow.

Coaching Those Seeking to Reinvent their Lives and Their World

As one of only 600 certified Master Certified Coaches worldwide, Karen awakens people to a new experience of themselves, transforming the world at work and home. A contemporary thinker with Renaissance sensibilities, she is dedicated to the evolution of human consciousness and culture.

Karen has spent three decades coaching, educating and training Boomer and Mature “movers and shakers”, visionary leaders and superstars to reach their full potential so to unleash greatness in others and manifest a greater tomorrow. Together we co-create positive futures and strive to meet the "greatness challenge" of our times. My clients are those who want not only success, but true fulfillment, hoping to offer enlightened leadership and breakthrough results that better their lives and reinvent their world.

Especially in midlife, accelerated discontinuous change can lead people to wonder: What really matters? What’s next? Am I over the hill after 40?

Karen’s continuous self-improvement model moves people to ever-increasing levels of peak performance, achievement and fulfillment as they confront accelerated global change, cultural breakdowns and personal transition on the way to midlife greatness.

Ms. Sands translates global concepts into practical applications that can be used immediately to generate visible results. By integrating complex theories and experiential learning, she puts a fresh spin on people's business, professional and personal challenges and helps them tackle an array of concerns, from dis-empowering daily stressors to deeply soul-felt philosophical questions to difficult choices.

Sands is dedicated to guiding women and men through their life course and preparing them for life's newest cycle and their place in our planet's evolution. To enhance their passage, she helps clients overcome challenges, make choices that maximize their quality of life and provide tools to refresh and re-invent themselves as they lead us into the new millennium. Karen is dedicated to developing greatness through conscious choice-making, especially-but not exclusively-- in midlife.

From Prophet to Profit: Cassandra Then – ROCK SOLID Now

Almost three decades ago, Karen correctly forecast the importance of studying emerging demographic trends (such as the Graying of America and the Graying of Business in particular) and linking them with insights from adult developmental psychology and the new sciences to understand the future values, views and behaviors of mid-lifers. Armed with this information, it became imperative for Karen to understand the impact on the future workforce and economy, and ultimately on our personal and professional lives. Karen foresees endless possibilities for a better future if we respond appropriately and with agility.

Karen has a strong foundation in the business world. She has been an innovative educator, an enterprising non-profit and for-profit entrepreneur as well as a highly successful start-up and turn-around visionary line executive in the financial services industry.

Sands spent several years leading, educating, training NASD Series 7+ Advisors and over 8000+ Agents. She became well regarded in the study of emerging trends and led the call for private retirement planning for high net worth clients and firms.

Throughout her corporate career, she was the forerunner in leading customer-driven businesses committed to continuous improvement, participative management, empowerment and collaborative alliances across functional lines and supplier networks.

Karen is as comfortable leading a start-up or turn-around company as she is in fostering paradigm shifts in her clients' lives or workplaces. Clients come from a variety of industries and organizations, business models and forms: partnerships, boards, teams and independent professionals all changing the model to a more profitable and purposeful workplace, community, country and world…leading, working and playing at a whole new level.

By combining her strengths of creative conscious leadership, transformational challenging and soulful inspiration, Karen coaches the already great to produce sustainable breakthrough results that change the landscape of the future.

A disciple and colleague of the late Dr. W. Edwards Deming, legendary Godfather of the Continuous Quality Improvement Movement, and protégé of Social Entrepreneur Extraordinaire, Nelson Broms and Mack Hanan, pioneer in customer-centered consultative selling, Karen guides her clients to improve the quality of their lives, businesses, communities and planet.

Karen's continuous self-improvement model moves them to ever-increasing levels of peak performance, achievement and fulfillment as they move through accelerating change and un-mapped transitions on the way to greatness.

In 1988, Sands founded the Future Works Institute, (FWI) to serve as a face-to-face, telephonic and virtual coaching and educational forum as well as a futuring institute. The institute serves accomplished and busy entrepreneurs, professionals, top executives, experienced careerists and mature seekers on the road to a greater future.

Karen is also a Certified Career, Life & Retirement Counselor, specialist in adult development, Master Teacher and Trainer, Mentor Coach, Accelerated Learning Trainer, Transformational Gerontologist and an adjunct professor at Hunter College teaching professionals.

She advised and contributed to the White House Task Force on Innovative Learning and the Hudson Institute's Workforce 2000 Task Force. The American Management Association selected her for their roster of Trainers for the privately owned small and mid-sized market CEOs and Top Management teams.

In 1995, Karen was invited to be a guest reporter at the White House Conference on Aging. She was named to Connecticut's Permanent Commission on the Status of Women's Advisory Council, and is active in the International Coach Federation, World Future Society, American Association on Aging and Association of Spirit at Work. She is also a participating member of Retirement Income Industry’s Association.

Sands is the publisher of an ezine, Future Works® Gazette and has authored numerous articles including "Reinvention to Renewal," "Bottom-line Soul", "Course Correction" “Aging for Beginners” and "Midlife in the Fast Lane." She has also written two ebooks based on her insights into and experiences with midlife transition, social reinvention and transformation. They are: The New Sixties: Reinventing Our Millenium and Crossing the Canyon: Women’s Midlife Journey to Greatness. Karen has also written a manuscript The Greatness Challenge: Being the Change YOU Want to See, a handbook for living your greatness and creating a sustainable future.

Karen has spoken at a number of forums, conferences and workshops about the new millennium workplace, current trends, coaching, visionary leadership, personal and global change and transformation. She has been interviewed by CNN, Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, The Washington Post and the Boston Globe and has been a featured guest on a variety of radio and television talk shows.

For 30 years, Karen has coached clients to creatively balance their work and private lives inspiring them to live their visions for the future. A coach for the vanguard, Karen Sands motivates individuals and collectives to "Create Greater Tomorrows...Today!^SM"

Karen would be delighted to discuss how she could partner with you, your firm or your organization to help chart your course, unveil your mission, inspire your vision, and "Make YOUR Future Great^SM."