Sarah Ciavarri

Daring.  Authentic.  Riveting.  = So engaging participants actually put their phones away. = This is how event players and participants often describe Sarah’s presence. Through empathy, vulnerability, and her ability to dance in the moment, Sarah has the rare ability to connect with audiences live and virtually at a deeper level.  Sarah is a sought-after creative thought leader on vulnerability, authenticity and resilience, trained in all of Dr. Brené Brown’s curricula, who leaves her audiences with clear action steps to craft a life they love, minimize regrets through bold strategic action, and to achieve professional excellence in the midst of uncertainty and division.

Sarah is the founder of Level Up Leadership, LLC, and has been helping organizations, leaders, and teams achieve professional excellence for over a decade.  Sarah wrote, Finding Our Way to the Truth: Seven Lies Leaders Believe and How to Let Them Go to inspire leaders through her own relatable and humorous stories and to provide readers easy steps to be more successful in their own skin. Sarah is keenly attuned to the inner life of leaders and regularly presents on resilience, kindness, and courage.

Sarah is a Certified Facilitator of all of Dr. Brené Brown’s curricula: Dare to Lead, Daring Greatly, Bold, and The Gifts of Imperfection. Sarah has facilitated over 300 workshops on Dr. Brown’s research and has supported thousands of leaders to dream and live big.  Sarah is among the few who have been facilitating Brené’s research since the beginning.  Sarah has the unique honor of being among just a handful of facilitators dual certified in Dare to Lead and Daring Greatly.  In addition to this honor, Sarah was asked by the Daring Way senior leadership to step into greater responsibility eight years ago within Brené’s organization as a Case Consultant supervising candidates through integrating Brené’s research into their organization. Sarah is Vice President of Spiritual Life at a large senior healthcare organization headquartered in Minneapolis, MN. Sarah is also an Executive Coach for women leaders in the C-Suite through Chief.

During the pandemic Sarah worked on a COVID healthcare unit as a chaplain and knows in her bones the resilience and dedication to mission that is needed to stare down stress, fatigue, and fear and do what needs to be done.

She got her “afrave” (afraid and brave at the exact same time) on this summer when she sang the National Anthem at a nationally televised Twins game! 

Sarah’s Alphabet Train:  Sarah’s got lots of letters behind her name but really why you should care is this means Sarah is always learning and adding rigor to her coaching skills.  If you want more details, here they are:  Professional Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation and is a faculty member with Coaching4Today’s Leaders and LeaderWise, Leadership Agility 360 Assessments, Train the Trainer Certification, 1600 hours of Clinical Pastoral Education, and Board Chaplain Certification. She earned a Masters of Divinity from Luther Seminary where she was a Presidential Scholar.  Sarah is an Advisory Board member for the Women in Leadership Program at Mankato State University, Mankato, MN.