About Cedar Wise Coaching
Coach Elise Miller
With 25+ years of experience serving as the director of four nonprofits with national and international reach, I have an intimate understanding of the challenges and opportunities nonprofits face.
I know it’s easy for organizations and individuals to lose connection to their core mission in the constant push for funding and in the flurry of day-to-day operations.
I can help you reconnect with the values that brought you there in the first place and enrich your own capacity to successfully navigate rough waters when they come.
“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
— Maya Angelou
My roots are deep: I have extensive leadership experience, plus 30+ years of mindfulness practice.
Decades of meditation and other contemplative practices have enhanced my capacity to be present, authentic, compassionate and responsive.
Elise Miller: Invited “WOW” Stories Conference Speaker, 2013, WhidbeyTV
During my nonprofit career, I helped organizations modernize policies, create a more equitable workplace and stay on course in uncertain times by:
Employing strategic and analytical thinking and systems-based approaches to leverage social change.
Collaborating with a variety of stakeholders in multiple sectors to improve practices and decision-making processes.
Fostering an organizational culture, plus structures and systems to support leaders of color in doing their best work.
Implementing successful nonprofit management strategies and practices, including fundraising, grant-writing, budgeting, and board and staff development.
Cultivating social and emotional intelligence by: actively working to uncover my own blind spots and biases to promote greater diversity, equity, justice and inclusion in the workplace and beyond; practicing mindfulness meditation; and immersing myself in different countries and cultures for over three years of my adult life.
Facilitating and/or presenting at dozens of meetings, webinars, workshops and conferences.
Authoring numerous articles and blogs.
More on My Background & Experience
Professional Leadership
Interim Executive Director, Hedgebrook
Writer, Editor & Advisor, SafetyNEST
Director & Co-Founder, Collaborative on Health and The Environment at Commonweal
Executive Director & Founder, Institute for Children’s Environmental Health
Lead Consultant & Founder, EQUIS: For a healthy, just and sustainable future
Founding Executive Director, Jenifer Altman Foundation
Publications and Honors
Published in San Francisco Medicine and Neurotoxicology Authored Forward for book, The Rise of the US Environmental Health Movement
Fetzer Institute Fellow Stringer for The Economist and The Christian Science Monitor while based in India
U.C. Berkeley Professional Studies Scholar U.S. Environmental Protection Agency “Champion Award”
Island County Health Department “Health Hero”
Civic and Volunteer Activities
Served on various Boards of Directors and Advisory Boards, ranging from Enso House (a Zen hospice on Whidbey Island, WA) to the Children’s Environmental Health Network (in Washington, DC) to Days for Girls International (headquartered in WA State).
Volunteered for numerous organizations, including as a grant writer, an earthquake relief worker in Nepal, a facilitator of professional groups focused on sustainability, a co-chair of a diversity, equity and inclusion committee at a middle school and a youth soccer coach.
Formal Education
Harvard University, Master’s in Education (1992)
Dartmouth College, Bachelor of Arts, History (1985)
Recent Continuing Ed
Coach Training Alliance professional coaching certification course - accredited by the International Coaching Federation (2021) Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction “Mindful Leader” course (2021) Restorative Practices for Racial and Social Justice certification course (2020)
As a triathlete, avid reader, kayaker, calligrapher and mindfulness practitioner, I’m committed to centering myself and bringing a calm strength to my work.
TESTIMONIAL
"Elise helped me notice and attend to my own intuition about what the world is calling for from my organization, and from me, in this time.”
Marnie Jackson
Co-Director, Whidbey Institute