Gretchen Reid – Integrating Life and Business

Gretchen Reid is a Leader and Soul Guide bringing clarity and purpose to her clients lives and businesses

by Holly Resignolo

Meet Gretchen Reid, a woman born with a passion to coach and transform people’s lives and businesses. She delights in assisting them in becoming a better version of themselves. Born a coach and facilitator, she is a sleuth for those seeking self-discovery and fulfillment.

Gretchen brought her skills out from New York State to Colorado after graduating with a BA in Psychology and Business Management, and an MS in Human Resource Development.

Shortly after, in 1998, her entrepreneurial spirit kicked in, and she began building Integrated Growth, a coaching and consulting practice rooted in one clear purpose: to ignite the minds and hearts of leaders to align around shared purpose so they can work toward something greater than themselves and solve real‑world problems together.

When her children were young, Gretchen founded Motherhood Transitions, a life and career coaching business dedicated to supporting women as they moved from independent woman to mother. She worked with clients through every stage of the journey—from pregnancy and birth to early parenting and even empty-nesting.

Gretchen guided women in navigating the shifts in relationships, identity, priorities, and values that naturally occur throughout the phases of motherhood. She recognized that these core aspects of life evolve over time, and her work focused on helping women integrate those changes in a way that created balance, clarity, and long-term sustainability.

Her mission was to craft a brave and safe space for women to acknowledge and embrace themselves as their personal needs morphed with parenting. Her business soon began to have further impact, “I’d be working with these women and then their husbands would come to me and ask what I was doing with their wives. Before you know it, they’d become a client too,” she said.

Her professional career path expanded when she made Summit County her home and stepped into a seven year journey assisting Vail Resorts in developing their leadership culture across the enterprise. She started by building leadership development programming for Keystone Resort, Breckenridge Ski Area, and the other handful of resorts they had at the time. By the time she left, she had impacted all 37 resorts in their expanded portfolio, and their associated hospitality and retail outlets across the country and internationally.

What Gretchen helped create became the foundation for Vail Resorts’ signature leadership, sustained growth, and leadership over the last decade plus.

In 2019, she gave her full attention back to Integrated Growth, and today Gretchen continues to empower individuals and team leadership for positive change and upgrowth with a new flavor and flair. As Founder and CEO of Integrated Growth, Gretchen Reid brings more than 30 years of experience coaching leaders, creating spaces for transformational conversations, and building customized, award-winning Leadership and Talent Development Programs in the fields of healthcare, wellness, outdoor industry, hospitality, and public service.

She does not do this alone. Gretchen Reid’s team at Integrated Growth is composed of highly trained, tenured consultants, facilitators, and coaches, each with over a decade or more of applied experience. Many have advanced degrees and are Certified Professional Coaches.

I had the opportunity to hold a deep conversation with Gretchen and told her how impressed I was with her list of accomplishments. Gretchen says, “What makes me different in terms of a consultant, coach, and facilitator is my ability to really lean into my intuition”.

Gretchen continued, “There are many ways of approaching coaching, and there is a unique process that I use. I call my approach SoulWorx. In addition to more traditional approaches, SoulWorx includes mind-body coaching and Evolutionary Kinesiology. These techniques involve psychology, spirituality, and muscle testing to tap into your highest wisdom. There are leaders out there who are struggling silently. All looks well on the outside, but there is something not adding up beneath the surface. They have gone to courses, classes, had coaching and team development, etc., yet they still struggle. That’s when they come to me. The process of Evolutionary Kinesiology can literally get to the root of what is holding them back. It’s like a laser beam that directly shoots into the root cause of their challenges with a neutralizing effect, while activating the positive belief and action required for them to overcome the barrier and move forward successfully.”

“Let me tell you a story about a C-suite executive I had been working with for over a year. During one of our sessions, this client was explaining how she was having a hard time getting her message across to her team. When she suggested a specific action to take they seemed to ignore it. This individual told the CEO basically the same thing she was trying to get across to the others, and when the CEO gave the team that exact direction, they activated the request. This executive had been highly successful in every other pursuit in her career, though had noticed a pattern when trying to mobilize others.”

This client thought that the issue was her voice and delivery. “That’s not it, your voice is fine, the issue is within your power center,” I said. “I have a process that I typically don’t use in a corporate setting, but if you’re willing to take a chance, I’m willing to do this.” Without hesitation, she said yes, let’s absolutely do it.

I enacted SoulWorx and the muscle testing process to find the barrier, the root cause of her inability to communicate clearly and activate others. We discovered that her issue has been with her since she was five months in utero. “I got this huge wash of energy, I nearly passed out, and I was like, what is happening? What’s going on for you?” She began to sob and said, “You know, when my mom was pregnant with me, the five month mark was around the holidays, maybe New Year’s Eve? I have this feeling there was a lot of partying going on, alcohol use, as I have to guess that my dad was scared as hell to become a father. I feel like there was an argument, some yelling, something violent that occurred. I didn’t know it until this very moment, but I was afraid to be born. I was scared to come out of the safety of the womb.”

It was a full on Wow moment. We were able to neutralize that fear and that anxiety, and then we were able to activate the positive to allow her to not just speak the words but speak the words with power.

Gretchen’s client was scheduled to appear on stage as part of a professional panel a week later. She said she usually would get up on stage and have this really weird out of body experience that brought a lot of noise into her head. She wouldn’t be able to express herself very well. This time, she said that she communicated crystal clear and was able to activate and connect with the audience. This client was thrilled and said, “I have never spoken so powerfully in all my life”, and continued to have the same result with her team, her family, and others.

I asked Gretchen when she discovered this skill, and she said, “When I was a little girl, around six years old, my mom confirmed this. I’d go into my little friends’ houses and look into their family dynamics and help them work through their family relationships. I’d have all my friends come over to my yard and play kick the can or sardines. We would play these games, and I always acted as the facilitator and teambuilder. Coaching has always been a part of who I am. I have always had intuition and have been an empath as far back as I can remember. I just didn’t know how to harness it until my first child was around one year of age.”

“I was struggling with something, I honestly don’t remember what it was at this point. I called this woman named LaRue. She was in Texas, and I was in Colorado (this was way before people did virtual sessions). She was a coach, and she was doing something on the other end of the line, and she completely neutralized whatever it was that I was dealing with. I said oh my gosh, what is it that you’re doing? Once she explained it to me, I knew I had to fly her out to Colorado to teach me. That’s when I learned Evolutionary Kinesiology, back in 2002.”

It was the spark that lit the fire of Gretchen’s next step into the work she is doing now, and the process has been proving itself over and over again.

Ultimately, Gretchen loves working with leadership teams and truly transforming them into a highly functional unit where there’s a high level of trust, a high level of productivity, and a high level of commitment so that they can create a greater vision to achieve a greater mission. Gretchen says, ”This is truly what I care about, people working well together to make this world a better place.”

Her expertise has directly contributed to awards, including Fast Company’s 50 Most Innovative Companies, Forbes America’s Best Employers List, Forbes Best Employer for Diversity, and ASTD BEST. Gretchen is a former professor of HR Change Management, Leading a Culture of Innovation, and Leadership Development for DU | University College Strategic HR Masters Program.

You may want to consider joining Gretchen for a one-of-a-kind Women’s Leadership Retreat in 2027 on the breathtaking southern coast of Algarve, Portugal. This is not a typical getaway. It’s a transformational experience designed for accomplished women leaders who know there’s more — more alignment, more fulfillment, more purpose. Learn more at this link, http://www.womenofthesummit.org

Discover More about Gretchen Reid, her retreat, and Integrated Growth at:

www.integratedgrowth.com