ABOUT

Bolster Resilience Now

“Resilience building is essential training organizations can benefit from right now.”

Meet Your Resiliency Expert

Nicola Bentley

Founder, Lead Educator

Nicola Bentley, IMTA, CMT-P: Based in Vancouver, BC, Nicola Bentley is a resilience educator and certified mindful leadership facilitator. She is the founder of ClarityWorks Training and the creator of the Power of Resilience workshops. Nicola trained as a mindfulness facilitator through UCLA’s, Mindfulness Awareness Research Centre (MARC), Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behaviour. She leads workshops for organizations to empower team members to bring resilience, clarity, purpose, and alignment to the demands of everyday leadership. She is also an executive leadership advisor.

Nicola brings twenty years of senior executive experience as a marketing strategist, facilitator, community and government stakeholder engagement specialist, and brand steward with Fortune 500 companies to her leadership talks and training programs. Nicola is a leadership facilitator with WNORTH Connect, a global organization supporting women in senior executive leadership and entrepreneurism. Her signature Resilient Leader training forms part of the Forum leadership program. She is also a member of the board with Whistler 360 Health and Zero Ceiling.

Nicola has had a personal mindfulness practice for more than 25 years. Her practice is influenced by her main teachers: Shirley Johannesen, Michele McDonald, Diana Winston, and Marvin Belzer, PhD. She has also studied with leading experts in the field including Daniel Siegel, MD, Matthew Brensilver, PhD, Marc Lesser, Pema Chodron, Phillip Moffitt, and David Treleaven. Nicola also teaches yoga and attends mindfulness workshops and retreats throughout the year to support her own insights and practice.

My Story

From Marketer to Mindfulness Influencer

I first met the practice of mindfulness on a yoga mat. The act of deliberately linking breathing and stretching complimented the demanding world I lived in. Long-distance running (for relaxation!) and leading an A-Team of ad agency professionals across North America, with the world’s most iconic hotels and resort destinations as clients, consumed my time and focus. Life felt intense all the time. Consistent mindfulness practice built my capacity as a resilient leader, helped me to navigate the demands of my career, and set the stage for Mindset of a Leader, my signature group training offering.

My purple mat went everywhere; it became more than just a place to complement miles on the trails and hours in the boardroom. By anchoring my mind with breath and movement as the objects of attention, I started to experience windows of mental calm and ease. In these glimpses of mindful awareness, my thoughts weren’t cluttered by team dynamics and competing demands; I was able to get out of my own way, bring ease to the anxiety of client expectations and the incessant pace, and act as the thoughtful, composed human I aspired to be.

Mindfulness bolstered my resilience and strengthened my ability to navigate the constant flux and flow of life. Being resilient and mindful brought perspective and patience to work interactions and helped me to be present and connected with the people I cared about most.

Inner resilience was essential when the foundations of life began to crumble following the 2008 banking crisis. Not only was I out of work, like countless others across the country, I lost a community of connections I’d built over decades; people who weren’t just colleagues, they were my friends. I had recently extricated myself from a misaligned marriage and left a family of in-laws I loved. I was in the process of resettling in a new neighbourhood and home when my family was impacted by several serious health crises. Mindfulness, as a pillar of resiliency, was essential to navigating this very intense time. It allowed me to be present and focused each day and able to bring my most compassionate, wise self to caregiving and health care navigation.

This challenging period became the inspiration to pursue certification at UCLA as a mindful leadership facilitator, the ideal compliment to decades of business experience. Being resilient became the catalyst to recrafting new possibility out of the realness of life.