Tambre Leighn was an award-winning Hollywood film producer, but after losing her husband Gary to cancer in 2001, her entire career trajectory changed. “It was the experience of going through that whole caregiver journey for three years and then trying to recreate my life afterward that led me to look for something that gave me more meaning and more purpose,” Leighn said. “The thread that I came up with, that made me want to get up for a day, was being able to help people.”
After discovering and training with the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching, Leighn became a life coach. She specializes in cancer survivorship, grief recovery, and training health care professionals in coaching and behavior strategies. The latter is her main focus today, along with helping healthcare professionals create more wellbeing in their own lives: from mindfulness to time management to leadership skills.
“The primary focus is bringing coaching into the world in different ways,” Leighn said. “It’s always about using coaching to move through blocks and achieve goals and experience life in a more empowered way.”
When it comes to her impact on health care, Leighn’s goal is to bring coach training to every medical school and nursing school in North America, and ultimately the world.
“We could really improve the health care system in a very cost-efficient, effective manner without a lot of time, money, and resources if doctors in medical school and nurses in nursing school were given some consistent training in coaching skills,” Leighn said.
Additionally, Leighn is in the final stages of writing a memoir, that she hopes will both share her own story and serve as a guide for individuals struggling with grief of their own. Coping tips, strategies, and insight follow each chapter.
Leighn shared that she feels it is important for people to know that her journey was, and is, no easy path.
“Just like everybody, I have anxious moments in my day or week,” Leighn said. “I have challenges. I have moments where I get stressed and don’t make the clearest or best decisions. I don’t get everything right. I’m not happy every day, but I am blessed to feel moments of happiness. I don’t do this on my own, and I don’t do it seamlessly or perfectly everyday.”
However, Leighn lives by her philosophy: to treat every moment as an extraordinary one.
“No matter what challenges we are facing in life, we have the right and ability to create extraordinary moments in every day,” Leighn said. “Life is a gift. The more we can live for, live to and live in those extraordinary moments, then those can become the connecting tissue that help us in the challenging times.”