If stress had a job title, it would be middle manager. Sonya Calooy is on a mission to fire it—and promote laughter instead. An adaptive leadership coach, learning strategist, and bLU Talks™ speaker, she’s spent more than 25 years helping leaders and teams turn pressure into performance. She’s built learning strategies for powerhouses like Shell, Meta, Baker Hughes, American Express, The Home Depot, and Virgin Media—teaching very serious people how to lighten the hell up and lead better because of it.

Her story started long before the boardroom—back when the world told her she was too small, too brown, too quiet, or just too much. Spoiler: she didn’t listen. Instead, she weaponized wit. After 9/11 tanked her advertising business, she found her way out of depression and onto the improv stage—eventually spending six years on the road doing stand-up across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. When people laugh, they stop seeing your limits and start hearing your message.

Now the founder of SpiritHawk Coaching & Consulting, Sonya helps leaders swap poker faces for presence through her Improv for Better™ workshops and the LAUGHS Method™, a brain-based process that retrains the nervous system to respond to chaos with clarity, humor, and the occasional snort.

Armed with credentials from both the International Coaching Federation and the Association for Talent Development, she backs every laugh with data—because humor isn’t extra credit for leaders; it’s the final exam in emotional intelligence.