Forbes Coaches Council Member
Top 21 Coaches in Ottawa — Influence Digest
Top Leadership Coach — Coach Foundation
Alexandra Salamis is the founder and president of Integral Leadership Design — a leadership development and change management consultancy based in Ottawa, Ontario. With over twenty years of experience working with executives, senior leaders, and organizations across Canada, she has built a practice grounded in a simple conviction: sustainable change and lasting leadership impact start from within.
She holds two master’s degrees in Human Development (M.A., M.S.W.) and is a certified coach under the International Coach Federation (ICF) and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). She is a Certified Executive Coach (CEC) and holds the Certified Change Management Professional (CCMP) designation.
Recognition and Credentials
Alexandra’s work has been recognized at the national level and cited in major publications:
- Governor General’s Awards in Commemoration of the Persons Case — nominated for her lifelong dedication to empowering women in leadership
- Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women Award — nominated (2018)
- Forbes Coaches Council — invited member
- Top 21 Coaches in Ottawa — named by Influence Digest Magazine
- Top Leadership Coach — recognized by Coach Foundation
- Featured in Forbes — for her work transforming a C-suite leadership team through organizational conflict and into high performance
- Senior advisor and consultant to the Canadian Government across multiple executive and coaching advisory roles
- Resource on Demand for IBM, PwC, and EY
Background
Alexandra came to coaching and consulting after building a substantive corporate career — which means she understands organizational life from the inside. The politics, the pressures, the gap between a leader’s intentions and their actual impact. That lived experience is part of what makes her effective. She isn’t working from theory alone.
Her work sits at the intersection of leadership development, organizational change, and human potential. She draws on established frameworks — including Integral Coaching®, Simon Sinek’s WHY methodology, Brené Brown’s Wholehearted Living research, Helgesen and Goldsmith’s work on women’s leadership habits, and Amy Cuddy’s Presence framework — and applies them through the lens of her own extensive practice and the specific context of each client.
Her Approach
Every engagement begins with deep listening. Not to confirm what she already thinks, but to genuinely understand where a client is — their strengths, their blind spots, the context they’re navigating, and what’s actually standing between them and the results they want.
From there, Alexandra works with a direct style and a light touch. Clients describe her as perceptive, honest, and genuinely funny — someone who can help you see hard truths without making them feel insurmountable. She doesn’t do formulaic programs. She meets people where they are and works with them to build something real.
Passion for Women’s Leadership
Alexandra is particularly committed to developing women leaders. Her signature program — Purpose, Passion, and Presence for Women Rising — was designed specifically for women who are ready to lead with confidence, authenticity, and real impact. The program works across five interconnected pillars: authenticity, wholeness, clarity, drive, and connection.
She has worked with hundreds of women navigating the particular challenges of leadership in environments that weren’t designed with them in mind. Her Governor General nomination reflects the depth of that commitment — this is not peripheral to her practice. It is central to it.
The ILD Organisational Transformation Framework
Alexandra is the author of the ILD Organisational Transformation Framework — a structured body of 66 in-depth, cited articles on organisational change. Organised into a C-Series for executives and organisational leaders, and a P-Series for change practitioners and consultants, the Framework represents a systematic articulation of the constructs, research, and practical insight that underpin her work with clients.