A threshold between the known role and the next one. We name the room you are leaving without rushing the door.
Opening the next room
The Philosophy
Sana Yara is a thinking and change partner, an integrative coach, and an ICF coach for thoughtful, self-reflective people navigating a transition, whether it’s a career or business change, a life circumstance, or something quieter happening on the inside.
The visual language of the brand, a glowing keyhole and what lies beyond it, isn't decoration. It's the shape of the work: what looks blurred from a distance sharpens the closer, and more honestly, you look. Coaching isn't about picking a door on a hunch, or because someone else already opened theirs. It's the discipline of getting close enough to see clearly first, so the door you choose is the one that's actually yours.
The Work
I work with thoughtful, self-reflective, self-aware people who have already achieved a lot and are ready to discover what comes next. That often looks like career transitions. Life transitions. Inner transitions. Some of my clients are stepping away from a role or an identity that no longer fits, even though it still works on paper. Others are rebuilding somewhere new, professionally, geographically, or both, and want a steady space to think clearly while they do it. Some aren’t facing a visible crossroads at all; they’re simply sensing that the next chapter deserves more intention than the one before it got. What tends to bring people to me isn’t a single kind of problem. It’s a shared instinct: that pausing to look honestly at where you are is not a detour from progress, but the fastest way toward it.
My coaching offers a space to pause, see things differently, and find clarity for the chapter ahead, through typically 10–12 weekly sessions spanning roughly 3 months, because meaningful change needs enough time and continuity to take hold.
Professional coaching that meets international standards does not include consulting, mentoring, therapy, or addiction counseling. Coaching is about transformations that occur through personal exploration and growth within the context of the present and the future, without dwelling on the past.
In coaching, responsibility for change is borne by the client, who takes action toward their own goals. We ourselves are responsible for our good, and sometimes not-so-good, luck, which is nothing more than a set of steps and actions that precede life events.
My work as your coach, a guiding partner in the process, is to support you on the way toward your bigger goal, not by giving advice and taking your power and agency away, but by asking powerful questions, sometimes containing caring challenges, and helping you explore your potential in the present for the sake of the future you want. All the answers are already within you.
A threshold between the known role and the next one. We name the room you are leaving without rushing the door.
Before the key turns, you look through. Coaching is a disciplined way of seeing what was previously hidden.
The answers are not imported. The lock is internal, and the work is to recover the key you already hold.
About
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ICF Coach | Leadership & Executive Coaching | 10+ Years in Software Engineering | 14 Years of Non-Tech Corporate Experience in Marketing Leadership, Category & Product Management | Agile Coach & Scrum Master
Hi, beautiful souls and minds of people who I hope will become my future clients!
I am an American Ukrainian who works in English, Russian, and Ukrainian.
While my formal name sounds different to my friends and family, in my international coaching practice I use my brand name, Sana Yara, which is built from parts of my Slavic first and last names. Sana means “radiance, light.” Yara means “courage, power, ability.” Both feel true to who I am and how I work.
My path is one of real, deep transformations, and I believe people come to coaching drawn not only to expertise and background, but also to personality. So here is mine.
I grew up in the USSR, and after it collapsed when I was around 9 years old, I lived through the 1990s, a decade most people in the modern West have no real reference point for. It’s worth saying plainly: what counted as “getting by” there would barely register as hardship by American standards, and what counted as real hardship there rarely makes it into conversations here at all.
Salaries went unpaid for months while people kept showing up to work anyway. Meals depended on whatever happened to show up in the stores, since most of us lived in city apartment blocks with nothing to grow and nothing to fall back on beyond what could be bought, if you were lucky enough to find it. Bread, some weeks, was something you rationed rather than reached for. And it wasn’t just the plates that were bare; being robbed in broad daylight, a coat, a hat, a pair of earrings, was simply part of the backdrop of everyday life. It could happen to anyone, anytime, including my own family. I’ll leave the rest where it belongs, in the past, and just say: it was a formative kind of hard.
Yet even then, as a child surrounded by all of it, I held onto some naive, unshakeable belief that a more beautiful world existed somewhere beyond what I could see. I couldn’t have explained it or defended it. I just knew it was there.
I eventually built a stable, good life on the other side of it, only to become internally displaced in 2014 when war reached my hometown in Ukraine. Once again, everything I’d built had to be rebuilt.
So it wasn’t toughness that kept carrying me forward through both chapters; it was a stubborn, almost irrational trust that things were still worth showing up for, even mid-collapse. That trust is still the thing I lead with, and it’s a large part of why I do this work now.
Shortly after I had to leave my home because of the war, I also went through a maturely and peacefully handled divorce, and I underwent a radical career change: at nearly 34, I left the head-of-marketing role I’d spent over a decade building toward to become a software engineer. Three years later, I immigrated to the US with just two suitcases, and relatively soon reached financial independence as a FIRE investor.
I know firsthand how to rebuild a life, cope with crises, and reach a qualitatively new level.
Coaching and facilitation have been part of my world since 1998, when my mother pivoted from working as an organic chemist at a research academy into business coaching. She spent nearly five years volunteering, almost daily, for a Ukrainian-American nonprofit that had won a US government grant, and that path eventually took her to America for formal training in coaching, mediation, conflict resolution, and facilitation. Growing up around that, watching someone rebuild an entire profession from scratch and bring back a completely different way of thinking about people, conflict, and change, quietly wired something into me long before I had language for it.
I myself had been thinking about this profession for more than six years, but amid the career race and adapting to life as an immigrant, this intention remained in a semi-passive state. In the end, just as the saying goes, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears,” I finally let coaching into my life. I was driven both by a desire for my own further personal development, self-actualization, and paradigm shifts, and by a need for an ecological exit from my IT role, when I felt an especially sharp need for a profession with deeper meaning, one that would fulfill me through the exchange of powerful, transformative energy with people.
If what you’ve read resonates with you, and you feel a sense of trust and affinity, I’d love to explore working together.
Reviews
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Products & Pricing
I believe in the effectiveness of longer-term coaching. Meaningful change needs enough time and continuity to take hold. Regular sessions over the course of 2–6+ months give clients the time and space to explore what is really going on, gain greater clarity, and identify a direction that feels right for them.
That’s why I prefer coaching engagements structured as packages of 6, 9, 12 or 15 sessions rather than one-off sessions. The process gives us enough continuity to go beyond a single conversation and create space for deeper reflection and meaningful progress.
15 sessions (4–7 months, 1 session every 1–2 weeks) + Personality screening as a bonus = $2700
A deeper exploration of what you want your life to become over the next 10–15 years, followed by the work of bringing that vision into focus and aligning your choices and direction with what truly matters to you.
12 sessions (3 months, 1 session a week) + Personality screening as a bonus = $2400
A substantial engagement for someone navigating a significant transition and wanting to understand themselves at a deeper level.
9 sessions (2 months, 1 session a week) = $1900 - Most popular
Very aligned with your language around clarity becoming direction. It implies confident movement without promising real deep transformation.
6 sessions (6 weeks, 1 session a week) = $1300
Good for someone who wants focused exploration without committing to a longer process.
I work primarily with leaders and thoughtful high achievers navigating periods of transition. If you’re considering coaching and would like to explore whether the approach, timing, and format are right for you, you can
Coaching packages are available only after we meet for an initial session and decide together whether coaching is the right fit for you.
Q&A
Coaching is about:
Professional coaches trained in ICF-accredited programs, including those pursuing or holding ICF credentials, are trained to work within a non-directive coaching framework. Advising or directing the client is fundamentally different from the coaching approach defined by the ICF Code of Ethics.
The International Coaching Federation (ICF) defines coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.” This client-driven approach supports self-discovery, creativity, and the client’s ability to make their own decisions and take meaningful action.
In this respect, coaching is fundamentally different from mentoring and consulting, where providing expertise, recommendations, or solutions is part of the professional role.
Coaching focuses on helping clients explore and realize their potential, improve their effectiveness, achieve meaningful results, and enhance their quality of life.
In coaching, we may explore the client’s thinking, emotions, and internal experience. However, coaching is not psychotherapy, and a coach does not diagnose or treat mental health conditions, psychological trauma, mental disorders, or addictions.
If a client presents with concerns that fall outside the scope of coaching, an ethical coach should recognize those boundaries and recommend an appropriate qualified professional when necessary.
Coaching is designed to strengthen the client’s own capacity for reflection and decision-making.
Through regular coaching, clients can develop a stronger habit of self-reflection, build trust in themselves and their choices, and develop greater inner confidence and self-reliance. Over time, the goal is not to become better at finding advice from others, but to become better at finding and evaluating your own answers.
Payment is made in full in advance, before we begin working together. It is not divided into installments.
If we decide to work together, I will send you a payment link after our initial session. International credit and debit cards and PayPal are accepted.
The International Coaching Federation (ICF) is the world’s largest professional association dedicated to advancing the coaching profession and maintaining professional standards, ethics, and quality in coaching. ICF establishes internationally recognized standards for coaching education, credentialing, and ethical practice and supports the professional development of coaches around the world.
I completed my coaching education at CoachingUp University, an international coaching school.
The training program I took and completed is one of only 6 programs worldwide, out of more than 4,500, accredited by all 3 leading international coaching organizations: ICF, EMCC, and AC.
You can find my diploma in the About section.
I also regularly participate in supervision and mentor coaching to continue developing and strengthening my coaching skills and professional practice.
Yes. Combining psychotherapy with coaching can be appropriate, depending on your individual situation and the roles of the professionals involved.
For some people, the two approaches can complement each other. Many of my clients work with a coach while also seeing a psychotherapist.
The two practices have different purposes and professional boundaries. Coaching focuses primarily on the client’s present and future, goals, choices, and development, while psychotherapy may address mental health conditions, psychological difficulties, trauma, and other therapeutic concerns.
A coaching engagement of 6, 9, or 12 sessions is typically organized around one larger goal or area of development that matters to the client.
During each session, we explore the client’s thoughts, beliefs, needs, emotions, assumptions, and potential limitations in order to gain greater clarity and identify the most meaningful way forward.
The specific focus of each session is determined by what is most relevant to the client at that point in the process.
I explain in more detail what happens during coaching and how we can structure our work together during the initial session.
I am currently building the 100 hours of paid coaching practice required for my ICF credential application.
I am actively working toward my Associate Certified Coach (ACC) credential with the International Coaching Federation (ICF).
In parallel, I continue to develop my practice through supervision, mentor coaching, additional professional training, and work with clients.
Contact Me
Serving clients across North America.
Feel free to reach out in ENG | RUS | UKR.
@sanayara.proMy current working hours are in the Eastern Time Zone. By appointment only.
Potential location for in-person meetings and collaboration.
