Sarah Filman (she/her/hers) is a leadership coach, facilitator, improviser, and performance activist. She is the founder of Playful Perspectives, with a mission to help leaders and their teams connect, create, and thrive by dissolving the work/play divide.

An experienced people leader and technical product manager, Sarah has brought her heart and humor to engineering and product teams for over fourteen years, including Microsoft and the Code.org leadership team. She is passionate about helping mission-driven people find their authentic leadership style so they can lead teams, projects, and their lives with confidence and joy. Additional areas of coaching focus include navigating complex work relationships, transitioning into management from technical roles, and finding wellness at work.

Coaching approach: 

Improv comedy is when an ensemble of performers creates scenes without a script to entertain an audience. Most people say they could “never do improv,” but minus the stage and paying customers, life and leadership are fundamentally improvisational in nature. Because even with well-crafted plans, unexpected change is usually lurking around the corner. And the best leaders, like the best improvisers, are highly skilled at listening deeply, communicating clearly, learning through failure, and building generously with the ideas of others to lead their team successfully. 

Sarah works with leaders like you to identify and unblock the new “leadership performances” needed to positively support the development of work relationships, culture, and confidence in your role. Connecting deeply with your personal values and purpose, an important component of this work is to get specific about what an authentic and sustainable approach to people management and leadership looks like for you.

More about Sarah:

• Associate Certified Coach through International Coaching Federation

• Certified Professional Coach — iPEC

• Energy Leadership Index Master Practitioner

• Improv teacher and performer at CSz Seattle

• Former Head of Product & People at Topknot

• Former Vice President of Education at Code.org

• Former Senior Program Manager Lead at Microsoft

• Ready to drop everything to talk about: Marine invertebrates, Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown, and board games