We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sohee Jun. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sohee below.
Sohee , appreciate you joining us today. Do you have a hero? What have you learned from them?
I have so many heroes and people I look too so it’s really hard to pick one!! In the past several years, I’ve really looked to add mentors and people I am inspired by into my tribe so that I can learn from them and be with like minded people who are on a mission to do good in the world. With that being said, my heros are Oprah and Michelle Obama for the obvious things we know about them. In my day to day life, I am so inspired by my friends and mentors, Selena Rezvani, Maya Hu-Chan, Marshall Goldsmith, Chelsea Pottenger and Kym Dolcimascolo. What they all have in common is their genuine authenticity, their unique genius and how they work to inspire and uplift people. They are also so generous with their time and how they share their coaching and entrepreneurship journey with me and it keeps me excited about the path I’m on. It’s so crucial to have heros in your life who you look to for advice, guidance, and also laughter! It’s key to be able to have people you trust and who help you elevate continuously.
Sohee , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Sohee Jun, Ph.D., is a premier leadership coach specifically working with high achieving women, female CEOs, executives, founders and entrepreneurs, a TEDx speaker, Forbes Coaches Council thought leader, and Amazon best-selling author. With her new book, “The Inner Game: Secrets Of High-Achieving Women For Navigating Work, Life, And Mindset”, coming out in March 2024, through Amplify Publishing Group she is on a mission to amplify women’s strengths through customized development experiences that are both strategic and radically practical.
Born in South Korea, Sohee arrived in Phoenix, Arizona at the age of six and continued to move around for most of her life, a small glimpse at the wanderlust she would experience later in life. Her father was an ordained Buddhist monk, and though she doesn’t practice this religion, she incorporated various aspects of this way of living into the mindset work she does with clients. Coming from an immigrant family, but having moved to the States since she was a little girl, Sohee often felt her point of view was overlooked. This feeling of invisibility ultimately drove her to uplift other women to be heard and seen and amplify their value, which is reflected in all aspects of her work and mission.
Sohee specializes in working with highly successful women, celebrity clientele, and entrepreneurs to unleash their untapped power for themselves and their teams. Given her life and work experiences, Sohee is passionate about leveraging mindset to help her clients be the best, most amplified, authentic, integrated version of themselves. She uses this mindset approach to help her clients overcome their impostor syndrome mentality, their inner critics, and other common workplace challenges; and this topic is in the forefront of her upcoming book. Sohee has over 20 years in the corporate world through her work with Fortune 500 companies, including those in the Entertainment, Production & Media sectors such as Netflix, Fox, Disney, Shondaland, and many more. Most recently, she served as Executive Director of Organizational Development and Change Management at Warner Bros. Entertainment. She previously held internal leadership positions at Countrywide Financial Corporation and Jacobs Engineering Group as well as various HR consulting positions at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Washington Mutual.
With a Ph.D. and Master’s in Organizational Psychology, and various certifications in leadership and assessment tools, such as Team Coach certification through GTCI, Sohee masterfully blends experience, theory, and effectiveness to come up with customized plans that work in the real world. Her academic education was supplemented by her mentorships with globally recognized top leaders, Marshall Goldsmith, Wall Street Journal bestseller, leadership author and speaker Selena Rezvani, international motivational speaker Chelsea Pottenger, and globally recognized keynote speaker and executive coach Maya Hu-Chan. Due to Sohee’s unique blend of academic, professional, and life experience, clients sign up on year-long waitlists to enlist her services either 1:1 or in group coaching and workshops.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
One lesson that I’ve recently been reminded of is that even if you think you’ve ‘nailed a lesson’ or worked to undo and or better yourself in a certain area, those challenges can present themselves again in a different context. For me, it’s around pivoting and the transition points and milestones that come with running your own firm and business. As I’ve grown and scaled in the 7 years I’ve been a successful coach, this transition point that I’m going through now which is to get even more specific in my services, very targeted in my niche and more narrowly focused with my ideal clients and my message and the way I’m in service to the world, was a reminder that it can still feel scary, risky and yet also worthwhile in doing. When people have known a certain brand and you’ve been providing services to a more general and broad base of clients and companies, it can feel so counterintuitive to shift and change what’s working and to go against the desire to offer more and be broader and to get very intentional and super specific about who you’re ideal clients and markets are.
So, as I reflect, my journey has been that…to continue to refine and evolve as I evolve as a practitioner and expert who coaches from lived experience and that can feel at times overwhelming and scary. I share with my clients and help my clients through change and to firmly know that change is never done and the goal is to be able to identify those pivot points using both your intuition and your intellect to be able to navigate them with a bit more ease and more confidence each time.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
Always doing great work with genuine authenticity and leading with a desire to serve those I’m in context with. I believe so deeply in the power of connections and that when you are present with the people you’re interacting with, they feel that energy, your authenticity and they remember that. In today’s world, “attention” is the name of the game. Everything in our lives (from tech to the news to social media) is vying for our attention. So, when I meet with clients, colleagues, friends or anyone new, my aim is to connect with them in a way that makes them feel seen, heard and valued. That’s an extension of my brand as a coach and when people feel that alignment, that becomes your reputation and what people share with others…which gets amplified.
My reputation has a powerful coach to female leaders, founders and entrepreneurs has grown through the time and genuine attention I give to each person I interact with. And as I grow my reputation as a keynote speaker, my aim is to inspire each person in the audience to live their fullest most authentic and bold lives and that’s built through the doing of each conference and event I speak at and participate in.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.soheejunphd.com
- Instagram: soheejun_phd
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sjunphd/
- Other: https://vimeo.com/user169934208