About SOMA
Leadership Alignment & Self-Mastery
At SOMA, we believe sustainable leadership begins with alignment, between your inner world and the way you show up in your work, your relationships, and your life.
Most leadership challenges don’t stem from a lack of skill, intelligence, or effort. They arise when there’s a growing gap between who someone is on the inside and how they’re expected to show up on the outside.
SOMA exists to help close that gap.
Our work is rooted in a simple but often overlooked truth: how we lead is shaped less by what we know and more by how we relate to ourselves under pressure. When that inner relationship is strained, leadership becomes reactive, exhausting, or disconnected, even for highly capable people.
When it’s aligned, leadership becomes steadier, clearer, and more sustainable.
The Inner Architecture of Leadership
High-performing leaders, founders, and professionals often reach a point where performance remains high, yet something internally feels off. The strategies that once worked still function, but they no longer produce the same sense of clarity, fulfillment, or ease.
This is not a failure. It’s a signal.
A signal that leadership has outgrown old internal patterns, stress responses, or ways of coping that once served a purpose.
At SOMA, we work with what we call the inner architecture of leadership the beliefs, protective strategies, nervous system responses, and relational patterns that quietly shape how people lead, decide, communicate, and recover under stress.
This is the work beneath performance.
Our Approach
SOMA’s work lives at the intersection of executive coaching, psychology, and embodied leadership practice.
Rather than focusing on surface-level behavior change, we help individuals and teams understand:
How stress lives in the body
How internal patterns influence leadership in real time
How reactivity forms and how choice becomes available again
How self-mastery develops through awareness, practice, and support
Our approach is Psychology-informed but leadership-focused. It is not treatment, and it is not traditional leadership training.
Transformation doesn’t happen through insight alone. It happens when people are supported in practicing new ways of relating to themselves, especially in the moments that matter most.
Awareness, Resilience, Connection, Growth
All of our work is guided by the ARC-G pillars:
Awareness - understanding internal patterns, stress responses, and drivers
Resilience - strengthening the capacity to stay steady under pressure
Connection - deepening relational intelligence with self and others
Growth - supporting change that is sustainable, embodied, and real
These are not concepts we teach from a slide deck. They are capacities we help people build through lived experience.
Who We Work With - Different Containers, Same Work
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Executives, Founders & Senior Leaders
We support leaders carrying significant responsibility, those navigating complexity, growth, transition, and decision-making at scale. Our work helps leaders strengthen self-mastery, internal alignment, and presence so leadership feels steadier, clearer, and more intentional.
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Organizations & Leadership Teams
We partner with organizations to strengthen the inner foundation of leadership and culture. This includes individual executive work, team-based engagement, and experiential workshops that support communication, trust, emotional regulation, and relational intelligence.
This is not “soft skills” training.
It is the foundation that allows strategy, performance, and culture to function effectively. -
High-Performing Women
We also create intentional spaces for women who are highly capable, outwardly successful, and inwardly ready for deeper alignment. Through circles, coaching, and retreats, we support women in reconnecting with voice, values, and self-trust. Not to become someone new, but to lead and live from a more integrated place.
About the Founder
SOMA was founded by Nichole Michelson, a licensed therapist and executive coach with over a decade of experience in high-pressure corporate environments. Her work bridges psychological depth with real-world leadership experience, supporting leaders who carry significant responsibility and complexity.
Nichole created SOMA after witnessing how often capable leaders struggle not because they lack skill or intelligence, but because the inner demands of leadership go unaddressed. Her approach is psychology-informed, embodied, and grounded in the belief that sustainable leadership begins with self-mastery.
Her work is known for being thoughtful, steady, and deeply human, meeting leaders where they are while supporting meaningful, lasting change.
Why SOMA
SOMA means the body, a reminder that leadership is not just cognitive or strategic. It is embodied. It lives in how we respond, regulate, and relate under pressure.
At SOMA, we believe lasting change happens when people learn to listen to these signals and lead from a more integrated place, within themselves and with others.
This is more than coaching or consulting. It is a partnership in building leadership that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.
Contact us
If you’re sensing a call toward greater alignment in how you lead or live, let’s connect.
An initial conversation offers space to explore what support feels most aligned for where you are and what’s emerging next.