Scientist. Introvert. Advisor to 1,500+ founders.
A good coaching relationship starts from trust, so here's who I am: my credentials, my story, and the principles I coach from.
Who I am
I'm Alex Senson: a biochemist by training (HBSc, MBiotech) and a Certified Professional Coach, trained through IBCI and mentored by Dr. Shayne Tracy, a veteran of the profession. I've spent 19 years in science and small business, always in companies of fewer than 50 people: six years in pharmaceutical development, then 13 advising and funding technology startups inside incubators and accelerators.
That's where the 1,500+ number comes from. More than 1,500 founders and CEOs have sat down with me, each a working conversation about their company and what they needed next. Coaching is the deeper, deliberate version of what I was doing in those rooms all along: understanding a person, then helping them move forward. Today that means founders preparing to face investors, professionals working through conflict, and introverts learning to lead in their own way.
A coach for people who are skeptical of coaches
If you're skeptical of coaching, good. I'm a scientist; I'd be skeptical too. So I work the way a scientist would want: I explain the mechanism behind every method I use, we treat changes as experiments with results you can observe, and you judge the coaching by what actually shifts in your work and your days. You don't have to believe in coaching. Bring a real problem and an hour.
My story
I'm naturally introverted, and I was bullied when I was young. Anxiety followed, and for a while my path was dark. What pulled me somewhere better was strange on the surface: I took up karate. I've practised martial arts for more than 20 years now, and I never liked the fighting itself – some people genuinely enjoy sparring, and I'm not one of them. I stayed because of what the practice kept showing me: fighting not as a sport or a game, but as a way of understanding people and myself. Studying fighting taught me what conflict really is, where fear and defensiveness come from, and how to fight for something rather than against someone.
The other turning point was working with a professional coach myself. Having an experienced person as a guide is how I found my purpose and my footing, and it's why I trained to become one. I know what it's like to struggle with low motivation, anxiety, fear, self-doubt, and negativity. You aren't alone in whatever you're dealing with, big or small. Coaching is not a replacement for therapy, and I'm always plain about which tool a situation calls for.
What Sanchin means
Sanchin is a traditional martial arts form (kata) whose name translates as "three battles": the work of uniting mind, body, and spirit so you can act as one whole person. I use it as the name because it describes the coaching honestly: all three battles can be trained.
The science underneath is your own nervous system. When your fight-or-flight response is chronically switched on, thinking narrows: threat makes you react, fear invites defensiveness, the defensiveness buys temporary relief, and the cycle repeats. Most of us live somewhere in that loop without noticing. Slowing it down is a skill, and it can be practised: breathing, attention, naming the state you're in. Calm isn't a personality trait; it's the condition your best thinking needs.
- Mind, your thinking energy: problem solving, self-worth, how you define success, and the mental roadblocks in the way.
- Body, your feeling energy: stress, anxiety, calmness, and the physical confidence that steadies you in hard moments.
- Spirit, your doing energy: motivation, purpose, and the will to act on what you've decided.
Why I do this
There's a line often attributed to Einstein – probably wrongly, which somehow fits – that there are two ways to live: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is. I run on the second setting. When I look up at the stars, I'm reminded there's an equally deep universe inside each of us, and my job as a coach is to help you explore yours.
My purpose is to help people recognize, uncover, and cultivate their own brilliance: to see things in themselves they could not see before. I will demonstrate and encourage empathy, compassion, curiosity, and experimentation. I will always seek the objective truth. And I will stand against and reject violence and hatred; everything I learned from martial arts points away from harm, not towards it.
"Effort and courage are not enough without purpose and direction."John F. Kennedy
This is my purpose. What's yours?
That's a real question, and a good first one for a free intro call.
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