Artist
&
Creativity Coaching
Write your book. Launch your business. Publish your essay. Change careers. Begin singing. Create your substack. Stop pushing. Start living. Find rest. Find joy.
As AI transforms work, organizations that invest in the uniquely human capacities of creativity, imagination, and original thinking will be the ones that thrive in the future.
About Sonia Rao
Sonia Rao began writing to survive. She grew up in an environment of terror, control, and silencing. With no outlet for what she was living through, she turned to journals, songs, and poems. That early practice became the foundation of her work.
She is a multidisciplinary artist working in music, writing, and visual art. She has released three albums, performed internationally at 1,000+ shows, appeared on NBC’s The Voice, and had her original songs featured in over 40 television shows and films. Her work has been honored by the NYC Mayor’s Office, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Los Angeles City Council, exhibited at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, and featured in Forbes. She is a three-time TEDx speaker and has given artist talks at organizations including Microsoft and Disney. She is also a classically trained multi-instrumentalist.
Through creativity coaching, Sonia has worked one-on-one with CEOs, founders, senior executives, political leaders, artists, and other highly accomplished people to develop their creativity. She also works with organizations to cultivate the uniquely human capacities of creativity, imagination, and original thinking in the age of AI.
Her organizational background began in management consulting, followed by organizational facilitation, designing and leading bespoke workshops for organizations. She is also the founder of Belonging Workshops, an organizational development program that combines psychology, creativity, and facilitated dialogue to help organizations build trust, belonging, and meaningful connection.
Sonia studied psychology at UC Berkeley and DEI at Stanford Graduate School of Business. She is queer and first-generation Indian-American.
Across music, writing, and visual art, Sonia approaches creativity as a record of consciousness and reclamation.
Creativity Coaching for Organizations
Creativity and AI
Organizations are asking people to work alongside increasingly capable technology. As AI has transformed work, the human capacities that shape what we notice, imagine, question, and decide have become increasingly important.
Creativity Coaching helps people strengthen those capacities: imagination, connection-making, judgment, intuition, curiosity, and original thinking.
Creativity Coaching for Organizations
Creativity Coaching is one-on-one coaching that helps people develop a deeper, more active relationship with their own creativity. It strengthens imagination, intuition, judgment, and the ability to see beyond familiar ways of thinking.
Creativity Coaching follows a consistent framework, while each session is shaped around the person’s creative goals. Sonia draws from a range of creative practices, modalities, and exercises to support the coaching when they are useful to the person and what they are working on.
Sonia has spent the past seven years developing this approach through one-on-one Creativity Coaching with CEOs, founders, senior executives, political leaders, artists, and other highly accomplished people.
People are multifaceted
People are multifaceted. The person leading a company may also be a writer. The engineer may be a musician. The founder may love design. These parts don't need to compete. They can inform one another.
How it works
Organizations can book six-month engagements consisting of one to five days per week of one-on-one Creativity Coaching for people across the organization. Each day includes four individual coaching sessions, delivered virtually or onsite.
To support psychological safety, all coaching sessions are fully confidential.
Ready to bring Creativity Coaching to your organization?
Creativity Coaching for People
I know what it feels like to want to make a change and not know where to start. How scary it can be to voice our desires or creative dreams for the first time—to friends, family, or even ourselves. To be at the beginning of something new and feel paralyzed by the pressure of possibility. To feel the urgency of knowing this one precious life is passing you by and you're barely even here for it.
I believe everyone is creative. There is no time limit on creativity. You can start writing, singing, painting at 10, 40, 50, 70. Even sitting down at the piano or picking up the pen for a little while can create real shifts in our lives.
You might want to start (and finish) your book. Write and release your album. Launch your business. Learn an instrument. Transition out of a corporate job. Bring more creativity into your life. Find your voice. Or simply feel less numb, uninspired, or stuck.
Creativity Coaching is a space to reconnect with that voice, move through what is getting in the way, and begin.
Using breathwork, writing prompts, readings, meditation, creativity exercises, and a consistent, supportive relationship, I help clients move through blocks and repair their relationship to their art — and to themselves.
I believe we confine people to the narrow identities of “artist” and “non-artist,” and that many people end up feeling empty, numb, or like something is missing. That what we call laziness is often a loss of belief in ourselves, or a deep exhaustion. That most of us were silenced in some way — talked out of ourselves, shaped into lives we didn’t choose.
I believe we have to protect our earliest creative instincts, and learn who keeps us safe — and who doesn’t. And that each of us has an inner voice waiting to be heard.
I care fiercely about helping people find, heal, and deepen their relationship to their creativity — to their inner voice — because my own connection to my own voice was broken, and creativity is what made me come alive again. This experience informs my approach to coaching. I want to move at a pace that is comfortable for you. Working with me is a mix of practical approaches and turning inwards to our truest selves.
I work with clients on a weekly basis. All sessions are held over Zoom and confidential. Employer reimbursement may be available; I can provide documentation to make reimbursement through your professional development benefits easy.
In a typical session, we talk, we process, I ask a lot of questions, and gently encourage you to go deeper. We work directly with your creative goal—whether you're trying to write a book, make an album, start a business, find your voice, or figure out what you actually want to create. We use writing, readings, meditation, breathwork, and creativity exercises within the sessions to help you move through whatever is getting in the way.