Meeting the Muse after Midlife is out now on Amazon or at your bookshop! 

About Sally

A glimpse into my story

My grandmother used to tell the story of when I wandered away from home at five and she found me standing on a busy street corner looking around. “What on earth are you doing,” she asked me, suitably alarmed. “Well,” I replied, “You’ve just got to know people.”

I’m still that kid who wants to know people, whether I’m teaching, writing a book or blog, or working around the world (France, Ecuador, Burkina Faso, Japan…for starters). When I hear someone’s story, I can’t help but care about them.

I kicked my people-know-how up a bit by earning a doctorate in Human and Organizational Systems. I’m also an explorer and have loved sharing my discoveries through my past university teaching, my talks, my book and the Engaging Presence blog.

I mix the idealistic and practical and the spiritual with the strategic. Isn’t that who we are—bigger than any one label?

I believe in shaping the stories we want to live—at any age, but especially as we age. I want the story of life after midlife to remind us of how we can become more creative, authentic, and engaged than ever.

That’s why I wrote Meeting the Muse After Midlife: A Journey to Meaning, Creativity, and Joy.

I found meaning through gardening, writing, improvisational theatre, podcasting, music, sound healing, and art.

What are you discovering?

I hope my story will inspire yours: it’s never too late to do what you’re called to do.

Vital Facts:

Once convinced the Ecuadorian Air Force to fly her to the Galapagos Islands (I was teaching there at the time.)

Met her dream (and only) husband while working for different campuses of Antioch University.

Violated every good-sense gardening rule and created fourteen plus garden beds on her property her first two gardening years.

The more official bio

Sally Jean Fox, Ph.D. is a writer, performer, artist, and coach who supports midlife-plus adults to create the stories they want to live— about the future. She helps them design more artful and creative lives.

She is the author of Meeting The Muse After Midlife, a memoir about finding hope and meaning in the second half of life—particularly through creative expression.

An engaging and dynamic speaker, Sally shares in a way that feeds the spark in others.

She has helped hundreds of clients find their authentic voices, share their stories, and design their lives.

Her long-running weekly Engaging Presence blog offers hope and inspiration to those who want to live meaningfully in changing times. Her Vital Presence podcast highlights those who are “Shaping the stories that are shaping the world,” with a focus on becoming more creatively expressive in the second half of life.

In her earlier career, Sally directed innovative leadership programs, both as a consultant and a university professor and department chair, training professionals to She coached hundreds of professionals, from all walks of life, to lead with passion and presence.

She holds a doctorate from the Fielding Graduate University and an M.B.A. from Yale.

Inspiring others to shape and share their stories.

She is known for her deep listening, intuition, sense of strategy and ability to help others discover catalytic new possibilities. She has consulted to organizations throughout the Pacific Northwest and abroad.

Her early career was in international development where she worked in fourteen countries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

Sally lives on an island near Seattle, where, when she’s not writing, planning, coaching clients, or interviewing guests for her regular podcast, you may find her working in her enormous garden or riding her Connemara mare.

A Few Facts

Principal: Sally Fox
Age: Older than she looks!
Education: A lot:

  • Ph.D. Fielding Graduate University. (focus: leadership development)
  • MBA Yale
  • MA. University of Michigan, Sociology
  • B.A. Oberlin College
On a beautiful island a ferry ride from Seattle
She began consulting in 1984, providing business development and strategy support for small businesses. Her focused changed to leadership as she discovered that without collaboration and synergy, business development can’t happen. And now she’s bringing in the power of presence and story into her coaching and facilitation.
Faculty Director of a Master’s program in Management for Antioch University Seattle. Product development manager for an early internet service provider. Photojournalist in Ecuador. Manure picker at the Yale stables
Service providers who want a genuine connection with their clients Executive directors, nurses, managers, engineers, scientists, doctors, computer whizzes, project managers, etc.
Connecting deeply with clients.
Bought her first horse at 42. Loves riding and caring for her inimitable-where’s-my-carrot Connemara mare “Mariah” (aka Miss Personality!)
Cuenca, Ecuador; Oagadougou, Burkina Faso; Tokyo, Japan; Cartagena, Columbia; Berlin, Germany.
Improv, her latest clowning class, meditating, writing and …performing stories!

Her husband Steve

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