About Penny

Penelope (Penny) Manegan Klatell

I think I was born to be a coach.  The official name and label “coach” didn’t become part of my resume for many years, but the paths I have traveled and continue to traverse on my life odyssey has prepared me, as your coach, to help you navigate your journey.

.	Growing up in Queens.

I was a New York City latchkey kid, the only child of an immigrant Greek father who never finished grade school and a Russian mother born on a farm in Pennsylvania.  My parents made my education a priority, which meant traveling long distances on New York City subways and buses to get from my home in Queens to Greek day school in Manhattan and the Bronx High School of Science.  Work was always the focus in my family, whether it was the seven day a week diner that we ran, or an emphasis on schoolwork.  Fun and relaxation followed school and work -- even in college I was a nursing major because that would give me a set of skills that would always allow me to work!

In my early twenties, a different me started to form.  I was the first in my extended family to go to a residential college, a big change for me. The summer after my sophomore year, I worked as a practical nurse in an understaffed, large medical center on Long Island which put me in accelerated motion.  I lived there, made decisions on my own and took care of huge numbers of  patients – and realized that I could help them!  The seeds of coaching were planted.

.	Penny in college looking out on the NYU Medical Center.

I have the privilege of graduating from what was one of the best undergraduate nursing programs in the country.  We were taught to look at the patient as a whole, not as a gallbladder or heart or broken leg.  We saw each patient in the context of the family, the community, the environment.  We worked hard on assessment and used what we learned to create nursing care plans, starting with short and long term goals and then formulating action steps to achieve them.  These were lessons well learned and they provide a basis for my coaching practice today.

After graduation I worked in the emergency room of a major New York City medical center.  I also started my master’s program.  Three years after graduation from Skidmore, newly married, with a master’s in Nursing in Biophysical Pathology and a minor in Education from NYU --  tuition courtesy of a United States Public Health Service grant -- I began my three decade journey of college- level teaching.  Over the next seven years I completed my Ph.D. in Nursing Research, gave birth to three sons, co-created the Program in Health Care Technology at City College (CCNY), and moved to Connecticut.  My graduate education at NYU built upon my Skidmore foundation and cemented in place my holistic approach to professional practice.

After serving as class mother, team mother and captain’s mother more times than I can count, driving thousands of miles to schools and games, drinking gallons of sideline and ice-rink coffee and hot chocolate, helping to form and then co-chairing the Parents Council at Wesleyan University, I became the mother of two lawyers and a journalist and an empty nester.

Although I continued to teach, I really wanted to do something else.  I loved being in the classroom and working with my students – a lot of coaching application there – but I felt like somehow I was just ambling along. I decided to make a change and spent a year studying at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition/Teachers College.  I knew I wanted to continue to work on a one-on-one basis with people, and came to realize that I wanted to master an approach that focuses on workable and lifestyle friendly solutions to personal challenges.

I read about NYU's professional coaching program in one of the university's catalogues and it seemed to describe the process I was looking for.  I enrolled in their life coaching program and, after learning about Results Coaching Systems, which uses a solutions focused approach with a heavy emphasis on neuroscience, I completed that training program as well. 

.	Spike, my pug, in the snow

So, after navigating a journey that began as a city kid in Queens, New York, then took me to a small residential college in Saratoga Springs, New York, then back to the greatest city in the world (a claim legitimately made by native New Yorkers), with time now split between Connecticut and New York City, I have my own coaching and consulting practice, Life Odyssey, where I work as a life, health, and small business coach.  After thirty plus years of marriage, having raised three remarkable young men and four more or less remarkable dogs,  and being blessed with a wonderful daughter-in-law and a beautiful  -- and strong willed – little granddaughter, I think I have found my calling.  In my consulting role I help clients with specific challenges, often in the health arena, to construct a workable life plan that fits into everyday life. As a coach I am passionate about working with my clients to set and achieve goals that will move them through transition points in their lives to create a dynamic balance that allows for happiness, fulfillment, and a life that is so exciting they can’t wait to get up in the morning. 

My journey, my odyssey, continues to evolve.  I get excited thinking about what’s around the corner.  I would be most grateful if you would allow me to accompany you on a part of your journey.  You, too, have amazing things lying just around the next bend.

• M.A., Ph.D. in Nursing Research from New York University
• B.S. from Skidmore college
• Certificates in coaching from New York University and Results Coaching Systems
• Certified coach by the International Coach Federation
• Certificate in Health Counseling from The Institute for Integrative Nutrition and Teachers College, Columbia University
• Registered nurse and certified health educator
• Member:  American Nurses Association, American Holistic Nurses Asssociation, International Positive Psychology Association, Entrepreneurial Women's Network, International Coach Federation