Melanie C. Klein is helping others embrace radical self-acceptance, supercharged confidence, and authentic empowerment in her roles as an empowerment coach, thought leader, and influencer. She is also a successful writer and speaker who furthers her influence through her two decades of work as a professor of Sociology and Gender/Women’s Studies.
Melanie has been doing empowerment work for over twenty years. In 2014, she co-founded the Yoga and Body Image Coalition, which helps individuals to experience body acceptance through yoga that is accessible and body positive. Five years ago, she began working 1:1 with clients who benefit from her guidance, unique skills, and framework.
The Inspiration behind Yoga and Body Image Coalition
Melanie’s decades of personal and social empowerment work led her to the foundation of Yoga and Body Image Coalition. The Yoga and Body Image Coalition was a natural outcome of Melanie’s 25+ years of empowerment work, both personally and on a social scale. The organization grew from her deep desire to help illuminate the unique and individual path each person has to pure possibility…and how stepping into our own power allows us greater ability and capacity to do the work for the collective good.
She has years of study and personal growth that started when she first met her mentor in 1994. Her own study and growth continue to compel her to share what she’s learned with others. In her experience, awareness about how culture works and the scripts we follow can help us resist, deconstruct, and re-create both those scripts and our culture.
Melanie’s own transformational experience is a major part of why she’s so motivated to help others change. A combination of intersectional feminism, sociology, meditation, mindfulness, and yoga helped her gain freedom from her guilt, blame, shame, and the idea that she wasn’t enough. When she experienced that freedom, she wanted to offer her experiences in order to inspire and support others.
Today she shares that possibility for personal and collective liberation through teaching, organizing, writing, speaking, advocating, mentoring, curating, and publishing anthologies, collaborating, and 1:1 coaching. She continues to work toward her aim to become conscious and empowered while developing and sharing her skills with the world. Melanie wants others to live fulfilled lives and contribute in meaningful ways to making the world a more beautiful and equitable place to live.
Melanie’s Business Challenges & Growth
Melanie questioned herself when she first transitioned from the academic sphere to the private sphere. She wondered whether she could exist in both spaces, worried about how she would grow with integrity and authenticity.
This need for personal growth forced her to let go of preconceived notions, misconceptions, stereotypes, assumptions, and projections. With this shift, she deepened her own personal development work. This pushed her to expand her vision and sense of confidence.
Because of her commitment to her clients, Melanie is constantly checking in with herself to make sure she’s staying on track with her own growth. Sometimes she gets nervous about a new speaking engagement or another challenge. However, she can take a step back and smile knowing that it is an opportunity for her to grow and push herself to her next level of being.
This positive mindset is a driving force she uses to help individuals optimize their personal and professional success. She equips them with tools for increased confidence, clarity, money mindset shifts, healing, action-taking, and overall empowerment. These things contribute to radical individual transformation and collective community liberation.
Her 25+ Years of Experience
Melanie didn’t become an empowerment coach overnight. She uses over two decades of expertise to provide a holistic approach to helping her clients. Her social justice work, social advocacy, intersectional feminism, and mindfulness practices play a big role in who she is today.
Her education and experience in media literacy have informed her work challenging the larger cultural narrative by creating more diversified representation in media. In her Yoga and Body Image Coalition, as well as works she co-authored and edited, Melanie helped push for diversified representation in the images used and stories told. Because of this, the yoga and wellness spaces look significantly more diverse than they did ten to fifteen years ago.
Melanie’s yoga and meditation practice began in 1996. In 2001 and 2002 she started her yoga teacher training and completed her Thai Yoga Therapy training (respectively). Around the same time, she got her certification as a massage therapist. She has maintained a consistent yoga and meditation practice for over 25 years.
Melanie also holds two degrees in Sociology with an emphasis on sex and gender as well as an emphasis on systems of power and privilege. For 19 years, she’s worked as a professor of Sociology and Gender/Women’s Studies. The unique combination of her training, education, and experience all made her into the empowering, supportive and successful coach she is today.
