Photo by Christina Sorensen @apparativ
Hey, I'm Jonelle
I love to partner with people to help them become more of who they want to be
A little bit about me
- John (dad) + Ellen (mom) = Jonelle
- she/her/hers
- Certified coach and positive psychology practitioner
- Organization development and culture consultant
- Hiker, camper, backpacker, latin dancer
- Reading psychology, grief and loss, trauma, healing, philosophy, spirituality, existentialism, memoir
- StrengthsFinder: Developer, Individualization, Connectedness, Empathy, Relator
Experience
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2019 – Current
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Coach @ Jonelle Lesniak Coaching
APPC Certified by The Flourishing Center, an ACTP ICF-Certified Program |
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2016 – Current
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Culture and Strategy Consultant @ THRUUE Inc
Strategy, culture, and organization development consultancy that helps leaders set strategy and shift culture to drive growth |
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2019 – Current
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Co-Founder @ The Movement for Healing Project
Cultivates collective spaces to explore how community, connection, conversation, and body-centered practices can support healing in life after loss |
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2019 – Current
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Project Manager @ Interfusion Festival
Brings together like-minded souls from across the US and beyond for four days of learning, healing, play and connection on MLK weekend |
Education and professional certifications
- BS in Economics @ Wharton School of Business, Magna Cum Laude
- Certified Applied Positive Psychology Coach and Practitioner @ the Flourishing Center
- Leadership and Management Impact Accreditation @ Human Synergistics
- Organizational Culture and Effectiveness Inventory Accreditation @ Human Synergistics
- Barrett Analytics Accreditation @ the Barrett Values Centre
My values
- Curiosity – Approaching life with inquiry and open-ended questions
- Wisdom – Drawing on many ways of knowing including experience, intuition, and wisdom tradition
- Perspective-taking – Looking beyond the "one-side" approach for other context
- Paradox – Making room for the wisdom of both/and rather than either/or
- Ownership – Having what they call the give-a-shit factor
- Connectedness – Seeing all things as intricately connected to all other things
My story
I grew up in a small Wisconsin town of maybe 600 folks. My dad was a sole proprietor carpenter. My mom drove the bus I rode to school each day. They worked hard, and they taught my siblings and I the value of effort and a dollar. As a girl, I didn't know where life would take me, but I knew that I couldn't stay in Wisconsin forever. I wanted to expand, to see more, to experience more. Getting to where I am now took some time. Actually, it is still ever-evolving. But here's part of the story.
I moved to Philadelphia for college, which was a total change from my rural roots. I wanted to ditch my hometown and be "successful," but I hadn't really decided for myself what success looked like. So in college I channeled my energy toward building a life that would mean something to a lot of other people: getting a "respectable" job, making a "high-enough" salary, moving to an "interesting enough" city, choosing the "right person" to be with happily-ever-after, and presenting as a "happy put-together" person. And while my peers and I were all trying to do things the "right" way, I noticed a massive gap between how happy we were supposed to be and how miserable many of us actually were. Rates of depression and anxiety across elite colleges, in addition to 13 suicides over four years at my. college, told me something in this equation just wasn't right.
I tried for a while to build a "should" life, but eventually I hit a wall. I am not built to live this way. I don't think any of us are.
The things that have presence in our lives — our workplaces, schools, families, traditions, communities, media and social media — have immense power to subconsciously shape who we think we should be, unless we consciously choose what to adopt as our own definitions of a good life, what will be fulfilling, what honors our uniqueness, and what invites us to unfold, become, and express our fullest manifestations of goodness and freedom. I can see the capacity we have as human beings to shape each other for better things, for truer callings, for more meaningful and fulfilling ways to live, rather than getting stuck in "shoulds."
In 2018, I experienced a profoundly deep loss. My dad died suddenly and unexpectedly. This loss shattered my understanding of the world and left me trying to put pieces together again in a world fundamentally and forever different. Faced with the reality of mortality and conviction about the precious brevity of life,
I began a new journey of meaning-making, exploring things that honored my strengths and interests and that made me feel alive and purposeful. I have made myself a student of loss and grief, trauma and healing, and positive psychology. I have deepened rituals of nature immersion, yoga, dance, and community as my lifelines. And a dear friend and I began creating spaces for others to grapple with loss, grief, and healing in communities of witnesses. Life gives back to me abundantly, especially when I get to connect with others on the real, raw, deep things in life—what's good, what's not so good, and what it all might mean. And I'm still figuring out the rest of the way, step by step.
Dave Evans, founder of the popular Design Your Life course at Stanford, describes life as "wayfinding." This lovely word captures so much. That finding our things takes time, that we can experiment and fail, that we don't have to strive for perfection, that we can seek out the things that make us come most alive, and that those things can change with time. May we all be brave enough to wayfind, and may we have supportive communities beside, before, and behind us as we go.
I moved to Philadelphia for college, which was a total change from my rural roots. I wanted to ditch my hometown and be "successful," but I hadn't really decided for myself what success looked like. So in college I channeled my energy toward building a life that would mean something to a lot of other people: getting a "respectable" job, making a "high-enough" salary, moving to an "interesting enough" city, choosing the "right person" to be with happily-ever-after, and presenting as a "happy put-together" person. And while my peers and I were all trying to do things the "right" way, I noticed a massive gap between how happy we were supposed to be and how miserable many of us actually were. Rates of depression and anxiety across elite colleges, in addition to 13 suicides over four years at my. college, told me something in this equation just wasn't right.
I tried for a while to build a "should" life, but eventually I hit a wall. I am not built to live this way. I don't think any of us are.
The things that have presence in our lives — our workplaces, schools, families, traditions, communities, media and social media — have immense power to subconsciously shape who we think we should be, unless we consciously choose what to adopt as our own definitions of a good life, what will be fulfilling, what honors our uniqueness, and what invites us to unfold, become, and express our fullest manifestations of goodness and freedom. I can see the capacity we have as human beings to shape each other for better things, for truer callings, for more meaningful and fulfilling ways to live, rather than getting stuck in "shoulds."
In 2018, I experienced a profoundly deep loss. My dad died suddenly and unexpectedly. This loss shattered my understanding of the world and left me trying to put pieces together again in a world fundamentally and forever different. Faced with the reality of mortality and conviction about the precious brevity of life,
I began a new journey of meaning-making, exploring things that honored my strengths and interests and that made me feel alive and purposeful. I have made myself a student of loss and grief, trauma and healing, and positive psychology. I have deepened rituals of nature immersion, yoga, dance, and community as my lifelines. And a dear friend and I began creating spaces for others to grapple with loss, grief, and healing in communities of witnesses. Life gives back to me abundantly, especially when I get to connect with others on the real, raw, deep things in life—what's good, what's not so good, and what it all might mean. And I'm still figuring out the rest of the way, step by step.
Dave Evans, founder of the popular Design Your Life course at Stanford, describes life as "wayfinding." This lovely word captures so much. That finding our things takes time, that we can experiment and fail, that we don't have to strive for perfection, that we can seek out the things that make us come most alive, and that those things can change with time. May we all be brave enough to wayfind, and may we have supportive communities beside, before, and behind us as we go.
Influencers and favorites
- Wild by Cheryl Strayed
- Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl
- The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
- Finding Meaning by David Kessler
- When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
- Carol Dweck's work on mindset
- My Grandfather's Blessings by Rachel Naomi Remen
- Pauline Boss's work on ambiguous loss
- OnBeing with Krista Tippett
- Quiet by Susan Cain
- No One Tells You This by Glynnis MacNicol
- Excellent Sheep by William Deresiewicz
"You can't navigate like a GPS would because you don't have a map. You have to wayfind. And wayfinding means taking one step at a time knowing something about the direction you're going, trying a few things, tuning it up and then doing it again and doing it again. None of us knows the future – we're making it up as we go along – so let's get really good at making it up as we go along."
– Dave Evans
– Dave Evans
If we're not supposed to dance, why all this music?
– Gregory Orr
– Gregory Orr
Failure is not the opposite of success but a stepping stone to success.
– Arianna Huffington
– Arianna Huffington