LONG BIO:
Samir Selmanović, Ph.D. PCC
WAYFINDING LEADERSHIP COACH & TRANSFORMATIONAL COOKING TEACHER
Chef Samir helps ambitious people stop hacking life and find their own way in the world so they can thrive personally and professionally. He uses mindfulness, poetry, and in-life practices such as transformational cooking to consult, teach, coach, and facilitate retreats.
He guest-hosted a cooking show on national TV in 8th grade, helped feed 6,000 soldiers in East Europe while serving in the military for two years, was an ordained pastor, got Ph.D. in human development, coached 100s of activists and executives over 15 years, and traveled around the world driven by the riddle of the kitchen as a practice for spiritual and professional development.
As the founder of The Kitchenhood, Samir guides a cross-generational and cross-career membership community of aspiring home chefs learning to cook with confidence and freedom while pursuing personal and professional growth and dishing out joy to everyone.
https://www.samirselmanovic.com
https://www.thekitchenhood.life
https://www.facebook.com/groups/homechefsrising/
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PRAISES:
New York Times:
“Samir is a storyteller and he does have stories to tell.”
Rod Colburn, Managing Director, GOLDMAN SACHS
“Samir is a brilliant chef and an amazing human being. He changed my experience and relationships with food, and with that, the way I experience life. Three days with him were full of learning, delight, and surprises.”
Lori De Mori, Tuscan Cookbook Author and London Restaurateur:
“I had the great good fortune to spend a day cooking with Samir at my house in Tuscany last autumn. We were with the poet David Whyte cooking for 40 people in a wood burning oven. Samir rolled up his sleeves and dove right in with such tremendous skill, ease and lightness of spirit that I remember telling him, “You need need to go out and do this in the world!” I’m so glad he is!”
Robert Manchin, Former Director, GALLUP EUROPE:
“At a retreat in Croatia, we went past unnecessarily complicated answers to what’s deeply personal and existential, each of us tackling the most perplexing issue we came with, something I’ve rarely seen in my long professional and personal experience.”
Patricia Morrison, Creative Professional and Business Owner, INNER FIRE OUTER LIGHT:
“I received what might have been the best coaching session of my life, a gentle and profound experience of opening followed by numerous pivots towards growing confidence and focus”
Ken Bradley CEO, FLORIDA HOSPITAL WINTER PARK:
“Over the course of a year, Samir helped our hospital leadership team rest in ways deeper than physical rest, contextualizing his work with us in a way that resonates, is impactful, and ‘sticks.I would highly recommend Samir to senior leadership teams for change management, cultural contextualization and fresh approaches to problem definition and solution.'”
Michael W. Morrison, Founder of University of TOYOTA
“Samir brings clarity, focus and spirit to the leadership journey. He ‘guides from the side’ — creating a powerful pull on our deepest desires to create meaningful change. He has changed the way I think about leadership and how I think about myself.”
Kathryn Himes, Chief of Staff, HR Business & Employee Solutions, INTEL CORPORATION
“Samir has been able to bring out hidden wisdom and courage in myself, that I hadn’t been able to tap into until now. Every coaching conversation I have had with Samir ends with me feeling full of hope, clear direction, and energy to accomplish what I know I was meant to do.”
Lori Wilson, Facilitator and Director of Getting Things Done, EffectX:
“Samir’s online live workshop was so much fun! He introduced the possibility that the kitchen can be not only a place to enjoy good food but also a place of transformation. Our group found the hands-on part of the workshop especially valuable, and afterward continued the conversation about what we might learn from ordinary kitchen utensils, when we listen. Thanks, Samir!”
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A BIT OF HISTORY:
Samir was born into the complexity (bordering on chaos) of the Balkans. Growing up with a Muslim father, a Christian mother, and an atheist school system—with capitalism to the West and communism to the East—he learned at an early age the power of storytelling, empathy, and courage. Samir’s restlessness, desire to find his own way, propelled him through a B.Sc. in Engineering, then across the Atlantic through an M.A. in Psychology, a Master of Divinity, and a Ph.D. in Human Development. Samir is also a graduate of Georgetown University’s Leadership Coaching Program and is an ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC).
Samir has learned something from each of his clients from a wide variety of sectors, including Harvard, Princeton, Glasgow-Caledonian, Freddie Mac, the Tropical Health Alliance Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, World Vision, Storied, Agile Boston, and the Florida Hospital.
Samir loves his home country of Croatia, the streets and humans of New York City, and the changing seasons in Central Park, next to which he lives with his wife Vesna and daughters Ena and Leta. When the going gets tough, Samir goes into his kitchen and cooks up kindness for family, friends, and strangers.
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FROM SAMIR:
Hello Friend,
The kitchen is a place where we can learn to meditate, create, and celebrate life while mastering the most valuable human skills we need for our personal growth and professional success.
I’m glad our paths might cross in the near future.
My name, Samir, is Arabic for a companion, an ally, a storyteller, a friend who is present long into the night.
When I get down and out about my life, really down and out, I’m talkin’ a talking-to-myself-while-walking-down-the-street-kind-of-down-and-out, I go for a walk around the Jackie Kennedy reservoir in Central Park. I feel the ground under my feet, look up and say out loud, “this life is my home.”
Then I go into the New York City subway, watch the travelers, and replace my judgments of people, institutions, and myself with blessings. Once I arrive at my apartment in Harlem, I pick three fresh ingredients from the fridge and make up a dish I have never tried before. In the evening, people join me and we feast on our lives.
Then I feel at home in the world again.
I love to help people, communities, and organizations ask better questions, cross their thresholds, and thrive on their own journeys.
Most of us want to grow, personally, and professionally. Yet, the personal transformation has become an overwhelming endeavor. We are in the middle of the self-improvement craze.
Overwhelmed with the amount of information coming at us, we have FOMO about the latest in “becoming the best version of ourselves.” Self-improvement has become an end in itself. We are all one more book, digital course, or personal coaching session away from learning that we have not arrived into our own lives. What should have helped us on the way is now increasingly in the way.
Ten years ago I was cutting lemons in my kitchen when I realized that life is too short to be lived like an improvement project. Instead of cramming life with new information and new practices, we can pay attention to practices that already make up our lives. Essential human stuff. Like cooking. Housework. Fixing cars. Gardening. Cooking, like sex, for example, yields its joys and meaning when we slow down in reverence instead of approaching it with a let’s-get-this-over-with” attitude.
My name is Samir Selmanovic and I am on a mission to help people stop hacking life and find their own way in the world so they can thrive personally and professionally. Instead of hacking life, I help people embracing life’s ordinary ways, increase their capacity to face the unknown, befriend it, and change naturally and inevitably.
I guest-hosted a cooking show on national TV in 8th grade. I helped feed 6,000 soldiers in East Europe for a year. I was a pastor and got a Ph.D. in human development and coached 100s of activists and executives over 15 years. I traveled around the world and through 40 states here in the US, driven by the riddle of the kitchen as a practice. Known as a Soul Chef I run The Kitchenhood, a membership site where anyone can become a home chef while practicing mindfulness, storytelling, and the ability to not know.
We all have this lovely suspicion that life we want is not some other place, some other time, with some other people. We can learn to live, love, and lead as we go, as wayfinders. It’s what humans have been for 20 thousand years, creatures living on the move. As a guest on your show, I will help your ambitious listeners or viewers stop trying too hard, let go, and get to the life that they want more directly.
It is not about the survival of the fittest or the survival of the fastest. It’s about the thriving of the present.
Full setup with overhead Apogee 96 Mic, Brio Camera, multiple lights, nice background, and fast ethernet.
Flexible.
