About Zahie

(BTW, It’s pronounced Za-Hee-yah)

Zahie El Kouri (Za-hee-yah) is a writer and Certified Martha Beck Wayfinder Life Coach. She specializes in helping ambitious women align their time, talents, and energy to write their books. She also helps men and women write their own definitions of success by imagining and prototyping different lives and careers using the Designing Your Life framework. Zahie has a B.A. in Literary Studies from Williams College, a J.D. from Cornell Law School, and an M.F.A. from New School University. She has taught creative, expository, and persuasive writing at the University of North Florida, Florida Coastal School of Law, Santa Clara Law School, the University of Oregon School of Law, and the Stanford Technical Communications Program. Her work has appeared in Mizna, Dinarzad’s Children: an Anthology of Arab-American literature, Ars Medica: A Journal of Medicine, the Arts, and Humanities, Memoir Journal, Brain, Child: the Magazine for Thinking Mothers, and The Manifest-Station. She is the author of two non-fiction books and is currently writing a novel about a family of Arab-Americans who start passing as white after 9/11.  

Like many children of immigrants, I thought I had to choose between a career as a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or MBA. So right after four years at Williams College, I went to Cornell Law School. I practiced products liability litigation for a few years and then corporate securities law for a few more years before realizing this was not the right path for me. I went back to school to earn my M.F.A. in Fiction at the New School and spent the next several years teaching expository, creative, academic, and persuasive writing in universities, law schools, and to private clients. I knew I wanted to keep writing, but I also craved more immediate connection with people. Teaching gave me this.

My favorite part of each of these teaching endeavors has always been meeting someone where they are, helping them identify and articulate any obstacles between where they are and where they want to be, and supporting their next steps toward the result they want. One day, I realized that my favorite part of being a teacher and an editor was really being a coach, and that I was never just working with people on their writing, I was helping them create the conditions in their lives and in their imaginations to make the writing happen and make the writing better. To further develop my skills, I signed up for a nine-month intensive training seminar with the Martha Beck Institute. I soon realized that I love working with people who are ambitious in all kind of different fields—not just writing. I have used the coaching training to transform my own writing life and love to help other women write their books and design more joyful lives.