Kim Olver, MS., NCC., LCPC helps people get along better with the important people in their lives, including themselves, at home and at work. She is the award winning author of Secrets of Happy Couples: Loving Yourself, Your Partner, and Your Life, and has also contributed to Whole Living, Women’s World, Fitness Magazine, Law of Attraction Magazine and Counseling Today. She co-authored Leveraging Diversity at Work: How to Hire, Retain, and Inspire a Diverse Workforce for Peak Productivity and Performance with Sylvester Baugh and co-authored a book with Ken Blanchard, Les Brown, Mark Victor Hansen and Byron Katie, entitled 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life. She is an international speaker having worked in Europe, Australia and the continent of Africa, as well as all over the United States, who addresses schools, counselors, therapists, social workers, military veterans, coaches, couples, parents and businesses on her transformational ideas. She is a licensed clinical professional counselor, certified in Choice Theory and Reality Therapy. As a life coach, she founded the Academy of Choice and developed the process of InsideOut Empowerment, which she employs with her clients and teaches to fellow coaches. Olver lives in Chicago and invites people to email her at kim@kimolver.com.

Kim knew in 5^th grade she wanted to be a helping professional when she grew up. She studied psychology as an undergraduate and earned her Master’s in Counseling at the University of Scranton. She has spent her whole adult life helping people with their most important relationships. She held a fulltime job and maintained a private practice until 2004, when she decided she wanted to start her own coaching business.

Kim wanted grow and have the freedom owning her own business would provide. She had no idea if she would be successful but she knew she would prefer knowing she tried and failed, rather than playing it safe and not trying at all. So, she quit her job of 17 years, moved from Northeast Pennsylvania to Chicago, and opened a coaching practice. She had her master’s degree, her certification in Choice Theory, a line of credit and a stubborn determination to succeed.

She wanted to transition from counseling to the field of coaching where there are a greater number of individuals more highly motivated to make the changes they seek. She also wanted to escape the mounds of paperwork that had come to dominate the counseling profession. She felt as if she were spending more time writing about what she was doing than she spent actually doing it, generated by insurance companies and She also worked doing public speaking, training, and consulting. And she wanted to write a book.

In 2006, her colleague and friend, Sylvester Baugh, and Kim wrote the book, Leveraging Diversity at Work: How to Hire, Retain, and Inspire a Diverse Workforce for Peak Productivity and Performance. This book is a compilation of best practice in the field of diversity interspersed with many personal stories from interacting in each other’s environments that help illustrate the points in an entertaining way. They have done many diversity workshops, including a gig with the NBA.

In 2010, Kim began the Academy of Choice, a coaching program, where coaches can learn coaching skills based on Dr. Glasser’s Choice Theory and the InsideOut Empowerment Process. When the National Board of Certified Counselors decided certified counselors who also did coaching had to be certified from a Board Certified Coaching program, she decided she would apply. She was granted this status in 2012 and began teaching coaching skills to licensed helping professionals.

On February 1, 2010, Kim turned 50 and had the most amazing year of her life. She authored and launched her book, Secrets of Happy Couples: Loving Yourself, Your Partner, and Your Life. This made it to Amazon.com’s bestseller list and won three prestigious awards—Living Now Book Aware, Independent Publisher’s Book Award and Pinnacle Book Achievement Award.  

Kim is very excited about the Academy of Choice. She knows what it is to make the transition from counseling to coaching, has created the revolutionary InsideOut Empowerment process to help people escape their self-sabotage and accomplish their goals and dreams, and knows how to build a successful Internet coaching business. Let Kim and the other Academy of Choice coaches help you reach your goals and realize your dreams.