Ely Zimmerman, M.Ed., M.P.H.
Ely Zimmerman, M.Ed., M.P.H., CMC is an International Coach Federation (ICF) certified Life Coach based in Los Angeles, California. His academic degrees are in Psychological Education (U.Mass, Amherst), and in Public Health Education (UC. Berkeley School of Public Health). His professional training includes 360 hours of clinical training in Humanistic Psychology (AHR, Concord Mass) and his CMC and ACC certification as a coach is from MentorCoach (Bethseda, Md).
Ely’s diverse 40-year career spans a full range of his interests and talents. Throughout his career a central theme has been working with individuals, organizations and systems to make changes toward healthy physical and psychological development.
His easy manner and sense of humor inspire trust and open communication. His most powerful assets are his highly attuned listening skills, an intuitive sense of personal and organizational dynamics culled from his broad experience and his ability to offer clear reflection.
He is widely traveled in England, Europe, the Near East and Asia and is culturally sensitive to different cultures and backgrounds. He is also extremely creative in helping clients define and solve problems.
Ely’s early career focus was in prevention and health promotion where he served as a direct service provider with at-risk youth for a drug education/prevention project. He then became the regional co-coordinator for two counties for the Department of Alcohol, Drugs and Mental Health for the State of Vermont. Ely later worked on the design of large scale prevention and health promotion projects at the Kaiser-Permanente think-tank in Oakland, CA and then developed the prevention / health promotion strategy for Contra Costa County’s pre-paid health plan.
His middle career was in business. He began in sales and became a national account manager to Fortune 500 companies. He then bought into and grew his own company, where he developed, managed and consulted to a network of over 600 small business owners who traded goods and services with each other. He ultimately sold the company.
When his wife decided to become a Rabbi and was accepted to a Rabbinic Seminary that required a first year in Israel, they sold their house and moved there with their younger son. While in Israel Ely provided organizational consultation to two non-profits where one client began calling him his coach.
Ely began his coaching career and his two-year certification training when they moved to Los Angeles so his wife could complete her training.
The combination of his early career in prevention / health promotion for individuals and large systems, and his middle career of owning, developing and selling his own business fit perfectly with his capstone career in coaching.
In his coaching practice, Ely works with people who want to make change in their personal or professional lives. He brings his experience and an appreciation of the difficulty of effecting change in his own life: in career change, personal growth, habit change, life planning, organizing and planning, systems development and management, successful marriage and family development.
In addition to his career tracks, Ely has traveled widely: to England and Europe thrice, India twice as well as to many destinations in the US and Asia. He has also been a long-term member of 3 men’s groups over the past 29 years, and is at least conversant in the belief systems and some of the practices of Judaism and Buddhism. He now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, who will be an ordained Reform Rabbi as of May 17, 2009.