William S. Donavan
Coach & Life Mentor
I work with men at life’s crossroads—career, relationship, identity—
helping them reclaim clarity, purpose, and direction.
This isn’t therapy. It’s not advice.
It’s an opportunity for growth and transformation.
Bill brings together a lifetime of leadership and lived experience with rigorous coach training to help people reconnect with what they already know—that they are capable of more. People come to Bill to step more fully into their life’s purpose and uncover possibilities that have been waiting.
- The Basics -
Coaching & Mentoring
Coaching
A coach doesn’t tell you what to do, but helps you think more clearly, and make choices aligned with what matters most.
This often means clarifying values, navigating identity shifts like parenting, career change, aging, or loss. A coach asks precise questions, challenges assumptions, and supports action, while treating you as capable and resourceful.
Many people assume they should be able to do this work alone. In reality, blind spots, ingrained patterns, and cultural expectations make it difficult. Coaching provides a confidential space with structure and accountability.
Elite athletes don’t rely on performance coaches alone—they often work with interpersonal coaches who help them think clearly and navigate their lives. As life grows more complex, coaching has become a trusted way to make decisions with integrity.
Mentoring
Mentoring often goes hand-in-hand with coaching. A mentor shares lived experience, pattern recognition, and hard-earned insight.
Mentoring can offer permission to change course, and may offer stories that normalize doubt, fear, failure, and recalibration. Where coaching helps you uncover your own answers, mentoring offers orientation. Mentoring may also include making professional introductions or helping you research and identify the resources you need to move forward.
Ways We Can Work Together
My coaching work is conducted one on one, and I work with clients all over the world. Sessions take place either in person or remotely via Zoom, depending on location and preference. Rather than offering rigid programs, my work focuses on a set of core areas that reflect the kinds of questions and transitions individuals bring into the work. Depending on where you are in your life or career, our conversations may move through one or more of these areas.
Transitions and Inflection Points
Support through periods of change—career shifts, identity changes, midlife recalibration, or uncertainty—when old frameworks no longer fit.
Clarity, Values, and Direction
Coaching focused on clarifying what matters most, understanding how values shape decisions, and aligning current choices with those values.
Balance, Trade-Offs, and Perspective
One-on-one work to navigate competing priorities—work, family, health, creativity—so decisions are intentional rather than reactive.
Performance, Discipline, and Capacity
Coaching that strengthens habits, routines, and physical and mental conditioning to support sustained performance in a demanding life.
Relationships, Partnership, and Family Life
Individual coaching focused on navigating marriage, parenting, and family transitions with clarity, steadiness, and values-based decision-making.
Leadership and Decision-Making
Coaching for individuals in leadership roles who want clearer thinking, better decisions, and grounded authority—whether at work or at home.
Creative Identity and Meaningful Work
Individual coaching for artists, builders, and thinkers focused on aligning creative output with identity, purpose, and real-world constraints.
Discovery
In an initial 90-minute discovery session, we'll break down the basics of change. We'll work together to uncover and refine your values set—what do you stand for? What do you believe in? How do your current and past life decisions reflect these values? We may begin to explore what changes must be made for you to wake up feeling vibrant and on purpose.
Women's Work
My coaching work often focuses on men, an area I believe is underserved, though the work itself and the coaching modality I use are not gender-specific.
I’ve worked with many women, and my perspective is shaped by lifelong relationships with women, including three sisters, my mother, and a long marriage. The work is grounded in awareness, choice, and aligned action.
Are you firing on all cylinders, or just going through the motions?
Maybe you're successful on the surface but looking for change inside?
"Bill inspires others to be more imaginative!"
JOHN BRADY
Senior Director Fischer-Price
"The end result of his work is as authentic as he is."
DR. LAURA JANA
Asc. Professor Penn State, American Academy of Pediatrics
"Billy D is made of curiosity!"
DIANE FRENCH Patagonia / Rivian Automotive
"Working with Bill is an adventure and an experience. I recommend him!"
PATRICK BATTEN
Apple Computer / Intuitive Surgical
"Bill’s creativity is on another level, and it's driven by his deep curiosity. He is an amazing communicator as well as tuned in listener. His ideas are bold and his experience is vast."
TOM FOX VP & Owner, Optic Nerve Eyewear
"He has a swiss army knife of creative skills and his positive energy and curiosity
are contagious,which makes working with him a joy for all involved."
KATE O'BRIEN Business Strategist & ADHD coach for creators / MusicPortland
"Bill is a pioneer in so many categories and easily one of the
most powerful out-of-the-box creatives I know."
JOHN FAY CEO & Founder Lada Cube
"Bill's incredible energy and creative insights are always spot on and inspiring.
Ultimately, Bill is just a great person to work with."
MARC NAGER Greater Colorado Venture Fund / Telluride Venture Accelerator
Psychedelics, Integration,
and Discernment
In my coaching work, questions about psychedelics often arise. I offer informed, grounded consultation for clients who want to understand the evolving psychedelic mental health landscape. My perspective is shaped by direct personal experience, professional exposure, and ongoing engagement with clinical and research-oriented communities.
Psychedelics can catalyze profound experiences, but their lasting impact is shaped primarily by the quality of integration work that happens both before and after the experience. That integration—preparing intention, making meaning, reinforcing new neural pathways, and translating insight into lived behavior, is the kind of work I do.
I am comfortable discussing a wide range of psychedelic modalities and contexts, from legally available clinical models to emerging therapeutic frameworks, helping clients think clearly about intention, readiness, integration, and responsibility. What I offer is clear-eyed insight that supports thoughtful evaluation of fit, risks, and possibilities without hype or ideology.
My understanding of this space is informed by both lived experience and formal study. This includes small-group, private educational work with senior researchers affiliated with leading academic institutions, participation in major psychedelic research conferences, and ongoing coursework.
COST
We start with a 20-minute introductory call that will allow us to explore fit and next steps · No charge
If it feels right, we do a Discovery call @ $150 for 90 minutes.
Then, we determine next steps. Coaching is typically most effective over a short series of sessions, and I recommend beginning with six. If the fit isn’t right after starting, there’s flexibility to pause or step away.
Sessions available in 30-, 45-, or 60-minute increments.
Coaching Rate $150 per hour.
"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new" —Socrates
About
BD / Billy D / William / Bill
Based in the mountains of Colorado for nearly three decades, Bill brings a grounded, Midwestern sensibility shaped by growing up in Madison, Wisconsin. He and his wife, fine artist Laura Donavan, co-founded one of the early new-media design studios in Jackson, Wyoming. He later built and managed a global manufacturing and supply chain out of southern China—experience that gave him perspective spanning small-team creativity to large-scale operations.
Alongside his professional life, Bill has spent years as an elite-level athlete, moving through demanding environments that include paragliding, skiing, and snowboarding, as well as film and photography work in remote, high-altitude terrain, where preparation, judgment, and calm under pressure matter—experiences that sharpened his feel for risk, responsibility, and clear decision-making. He brings the same steadiness into his coaching work, informed by a 35-year marriage and raising two children into adulthood.
Across these varied environments, the through line in Bill’s work has been strategic communications, helping people and organizations make sound decisions, and communicate with integrity. —LD
- Let's Hop On A Call -
Contact Us
The Co-Active Training Institute (CTI) is a globally respected leader in coach training, known both for a methodology that helped inform the professional standards later formalized by the International Coaching Federation and for one of the most rigorous and demanding certification pathways in the coaching profession.