Kathy Masarie

Kathy Masarie wears many hats. She is the parent of two wonderful young adults. She is a pediatrician who left her medical practice in 1997 to found a non-profit organization, Full Esteem Ahead to “help parent help kids and one another.”  Kathy is now working as a Parent and Life Coach, giving seminars and workshops, leading parenting and communication classes and working one-on-one with adults and teens. As a pediatrician and the founder of Full Esteem Ahead, she worked with thousands of caring adults to help our kids stay healthy and thrive. Now as a life coach, she continues to proactively improve family connection.

Kathy received a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry and Biology from Southern Oregon University and her medical degree from OHSU. She did her pediatric residency at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh where she lived for ten years before moving back to Portland. 

WORK LIFE

As a practicing pediatrician her biggest love was to foster bonding between parents and their children and to intervene early in problems. She became frustrated when she started noticing that too often teens showed up late in their struggles with violence, substance abuse, depression, and promiscuity.  She decided she wanted to support families earlier. In 1997 she left her pediatric practice to found a non-profit, Full Esteem Ahead, whose mission was to “help parents help kids and one another.” 

While at Full Esteem Ahead, Kathy developed seminars on a broad range of topics but discovered that parents wanted more. So she led the development of three self-facilitated, parent discussion guides that have had a profound impact on empowering, connecting and networking hundreds of parents. The guides, Raising our Sons, Raising our Daughters and Kids Social Lives and Peer Aggression, are essentially the “cliff notes” of parenting information. But their real power lies in the networking. Parents who took the class eight years ago, talked and supported each other every step of the way through the graduation of their kids. After ten years, Full Esteem Ahead closed its doors due to lack of funds. Kathy is re-releasing the discussion guides in 2008 under a new business Family Empowerment Network.

As Kathy transitioned into Life Coaching, she found that coaching parents to impact their families at deeper level was the perfect blend of her life experiences. She assists her clients, who are striving to do things differently, to bring balance and clarity into their lives. And the end result is that adults and children are connected, whole, caring and fulfilled.

PERSONAL LIFE

Kathy raised two beautiful, competent children, is passionate about her family and friends, personal growth, exercise and nature. Most of all, she is passionately involved in bringing ideas into action and community building.

Kathy learned more from raising her two very interesting and challenging children than she could learn in any PhD or MD program.  Her ongoing quest for personal growth took her into voluntary simplicity movement and to Wings Seminars for Innovative Learning and Personal Growth. She has been greatly influenced by Vicki Robin, author of Your Money or Your Life, Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia, William Pollack, author of Real Boys, Jane Nelson author of Positive Discipline, Sue Wellman founder of the Ophelia Project, Kris King and Bev Foster of Wings Seminars in Eugene and Marshall Rosenberg, author of Nonviolent Communication, the Language of Love.

Her community-building passion knows no bounds. For ten years, she organized gingerbread parties for Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, the neighborhood children and eventually 200 houses at her kid’s elementary school.  She started and ran a bike safety program for eight years that included a bike rodeo, bike poster contests and an ice cream social.  She helped start a “Coming of Age” program at her church to honor kids transitioning to teens that included mentoring and a vision quest.  She ran a Girls Science Club and a Girls Sports Club at the middle school.  Yearly, she organizes a photo collage of the neighborhood children so the neighbors will all know the children’s names and faces. These are distributed along with the May Day baskets the neighborhood children build.  With her husband Chip, who is also a passionate community builder, they have organized seven annual two day bike adventure for close friends.  Their biggest event is “Create the World” day (www.createtheworld.org) where one day a year, 60-80 friends come for the day to celebrate and share passion. Every half hour- 2-3 people share their passion with others, from “How to speak Italian in ten minutes,” to building fairy furniture to learning how to play Frisbee golf.  One attendee was so excited she bounced from one activity to another for 13 straight hours.

Kathy is passionate about physical activity and being in nature at least one hour a day. She has done sports and outdoor activities her whole life from "all" sports when she was a child, to competitive swimming, skiing, track, basketball and tennis as a student to running, hiking, skiing, backpacking and bike riding as an adult.

We treasure Kathy’s enthusiasm and zest for life. She brings fun, passion and excitement into everything that she does and we love and enjoy being around her. 

Submitted by Lee Doss and Chip Masarie