Our Founder

Dorothy E. Siminovitch, PhD, MCC, is founder and president of Gestalt Coaching Works, LLC. She is an international coach, consultant, speaker, and author. Dorothy is the founder and co-owner of the Gestalt Coaching Program in Istanbul, an ICF-ACTP coach training program which she serves as Director of Training and as faculty. She is co‐founder of the Gestalt Center for Coaching, which delivers ICF-accredited coach training workshops and extended programs internationally.

Dorothy earned her PhD through Case Western Reserve University’s prestigious Department of Organizational Behavior. She pioneered the application of Gestalt theory, concepts, and practices in the service of professional coaching. She began delivering Gestalt coach training in 1996 and earned her master certified credential (MCC) from the International Coach Federation (ICF) in 2005.  

Dorothy specializes in coaching for signature awareness of one’s presence, leadership peak performance, overcoming derailment, and working with high performance leaders, groups, and teams. She provides world‐class training in innovative and adaptive Gestalt-based coaching, resulting in transformative personal and professional development and learning for individuals, groups, and organizations. She presents additional training and development opportunities to ICF conferences and chapters and by invitation to commercial and non-profit organizations worldwide. Her book, A Gestalt Coaching Primer: The Path Toward Awareness Intelligence is recognized as a classic introduction to professional coaching for those well-practiced and novices alike. She is co-developer and co-author of the Awareness 20/20™ leadership assessment instrument, a quantitative analysis of leaders’ awareness and the demonstrated ROI benefits of the self-aware leader.

Dorothy is best known by colleagues, clients, students, and presentation participants as someone whose inviting warmth inspires trust, hope, and intuitive wisdom. Engaging and observant, she practices a passionate commitment to being aware in the moment, to bringing her transformational presence to bear in every encounter, and to perceiving and offering new possibilities and choices.