As a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with the International Coaching Federation (ICF), Sunni Smith is a past ICFLA board member. Possessing an extensive professional background in counseling, business, and law. Early in her coaching career, she earned certifications in Team Advantage Coaching®; Emotional Intelligence 2.0, and Conversational Intelligence®(C-IQ).
In her coaching approach, she draws upon those initial modalities and other certifications including Liberatory Coaching, South African Mbuntu Coaching, and Coaching SuperVision. In 2021, Sunni was awarded an EMCC SuperVision Quality Award and subsequently provided Coaching SuperVision for Mindful Leadership Consulting, National Arts Strategies (NAS), and Coaching for Social Justice (CSJ).
Sunni also intermittently works as an executive/leadership contractor with the Ariel Group, the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), the UCLA Anderson Graduate MBA Program, and Leading Edge while lending her legal expertise as an adjunct associate professor teaching administrative justice courses.
Sunni’s formative years were spent on the East Coast as a first-generation child of Caribbean heritage. She migrated west after completing law school and being awarded a CORO Foundation Public Policy Fellowship. Currently, she is fully acclimated to life in Southern California, although she will always consider herself a “Native New Yorker,” as well as a global citizen.
Her business acumen and public sector experience allowed her to lead international trade missions to South Africa and Colombia, South America, and during the COVID pandemic, she was asked to present at the annual conference of the Qingyeteng Coaching Center, in Shanghai, China. Sunni’s affirmative mindset and cultural competency, have often caused both domestic and international clients to designate her, the “Ambassador of Possibilities!”
Education & Credentials
- LLM, Georgetown University Law Center, Public Policy Law
- JD, The Catholic University of America, Communications Law Institute
- MS, Virginia Commonwealth University, Counseling and Rehabilitation
- CORO Foundation Public Policy Fellowship
- Annenberg Summer Faculty Fellowship
Ms. Smith is certified to administer and interpret The Hogan Personality Assessment (HPI), the Influence Style Indicator (ISI), Leadership Management 360, Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation-Behavior (FIRO-B), and Paradigm Personality Labs Workplace Big 5. She recently completed the certification work in Creating Futures that Work ® (CFTW), an Arts-Based Experiential Learning (A.B.E.L.) component, and its Leadership and Innovation Skills Assessment (LISA) instrument.