Hey there, I’m Korbin – President of I*WE :)
What a gift that you’re here. Thank you for finding our page – and our stories. I hope within them, you see yourself in I*WE’s story. It’s only just beginning…
Korbin Lyn-Paul
ORGIN
My name is Korbin Lyn Paul after my mama’s name – Kim Koralyn. She was a total caregiver, working as a nurse and special needs paraprofessional. She LOVED being a mom and I loved her as my home.
My dad, Dennis, is a carpenter, and they were high school sweeties. My ma was raised on a dairy farm and my dad on a chicken farm – in tiny neighboring towns in a rolling, glacial stone-lined river valley in western Wisconsin.
It’s where our Scandinavian and Baltic ancestors put down roots a few generations ago. Right before the confluence with the mighty Mississippi, this valley’s river is known by its Dakota people as Hogan-wau-ke-kin — “the place where the fish lies.”
My older brother, cousins and I did get to fish there – for walleye, bass and panfish – with my dad in his lil fishing boat. We camped, played sports, and ran free in the countryside.
We also struggled with money, drank too much, and didn't talk enough. We had divorces, troubles, and accidents. On Sundays, we prayed together.
As I got older, a powerful force moved me: a heightened sense of adventure and seeking. Which brought me somewhere miles away and completely unexpected…
COMING OF AGE: SPIRIT & SYSTEMS
South Florida beckoned and I began my higher education there at age 18.
Holy awakening for a Miwdwestern farmtown girl!
My Florida chapter crashed awake with salty waves meeting manatee mangroves. I awakened with education. First Anthropology, then Biology…
But what awakened my story was weaving it with others’ that were so much different than mine. I made friends with Latinx folks, Rastafarians, eastern seaboard Jews – all so far from my own upbringing. Through the intersection of our stories, I began to see the layers of disconnection colonization and oppression have made. Not just right here right now but again and again – through time and across humanity, fracturing our relationships to land, each other and self.
My world view began morphing and my hunger for consciousness ignited. I started dreaming of systems change that reunites.
The fire that ignited burns to know God, like really know God. I began exploring outside the Christian church I grew up in. I prayed in Gudwaras with Sikh tradition, Bahai’i gatherings, Kemetic yoga on the beach, drum circles and Buddhist temples.
Within that passage, tragedy struck.
LOSS & ADDICTION
We lost my mom to cancer when I was 22. My blood family distanced while my soul family ties multiplied and strengthened as I began to travel further.
I went to Nepal for a summer farming internship for my horticulture degree – and to prove to myself I could make it solo in this world.
This adventure rooted me in confidence and connection. It opened my eyes to seed keeping, which would be my first real career passage after graduation, as Field Crew Leader at Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa.
For five growing seasons I put my boots on the ground, and shaped my leadership - guiding a team to regenerate 1,000 seed varieties every season. My prayer life had taken me into native ceremonies that also revealed how I did and didn’t want to lead. I blended all this insight as we partnered with the Indigenous Seedkeepers Network to bring home seedsto first nations communities.
As I walked the farming career path, I lived transiently and alternatively: sometimes off-grid and sometimes tending someone else’s farm or homestead. I lived in a three-season cottage, a tiny house, and roomed with elders, boyfriends and entrepreneurs.
And it got dark at times. I walked through ten years of crippling loneliness and disconnection. I felt like I was drowning in failing expectations to partner and marry, start my own family, get my own house. I also struggled with alcohol, big time. After a traumatic brain injury that sent me deep into addiction – drinking alone, drinking during the day – I finally quit! That was eight years ago. It’s been a long but sure road – one that brought me to places I never imagined.
LETTING GO & EMERGING
These were the primers that taught me to let go in a spiritual sense. As societal scripts fell away, I was able to continue walking my own unique script, my purpose. That only the Big Dogg, the Most High gets to orchestrate. This led to some BIG letting go’s.
First I let go of my childhood ideas of Christ, as the Trinity came back into my life. Then my narrow concept of partnership – as I came to know spiritual partnership with my best friend, Frances.
Then I let go of my livelihood in my home country. I planned to study fisheries in Norway, but that morphed into a year at a folk school studying Arctic bushcraft and Indigenous peoples.
This enchanted place was where something completely unexpected happened.
Some of the students, a generation younger than me, asked me a life-altering question. They asked if I’d teach them “how to have good conversations”! Now this was the single coolest question I had ever been asked, so I naturally said yes.
We learned a lot about what good conversations require of us and this first gathering turned into many more, with about twelve students every week. We’d leave the school campus on foot or ski and wander into the forest. Sometimes beneath starry sky, sometimes in the glowing dance of northern lights. Deep in the boreal bogs, an indigenous structure called a “Gamme” (GAH-mah) was built by my class the year before. It’s made of birch bones and peat skin for insulation.
We’d enter and light the fire beneath the hatched roof. “How to have good conversations” sparked topics like self worth, honest communication and healthy relationships. It felt so good, so natural to facilitate these explorations. It gave me a deep sense of meaning and purpose.
I didn’t realize that what I was doing was called coaching, but when I learned it, I went through some life-changing trainings that brought me closer to my gifts and to who I am.
Which has to do with your gifts, and who you are…
CREATIVE LEADERSHIP
The “Gamme Talks” in Norway showed me that transformation is more fun and even more powerful when we’re vulnerable in a group together. I remember seeing the surprise of the students, in the hearthlight of the fire, as they realized being transparent and sharing their depth is like coming home. It’s what we were designed to do.
This was reinforced on a sailing ship in Spain where I landed a coaching gig after Norway. When I got home from there, I officially certified as a professional coach.
Since then I’ve attracted one particular type of client. So if you’re still here, you’re likely it:
Creatives! Who want to springboard past feeling stuck, stifled or burnt out so they can make, express and create the way they want to. I also coach speakers and have helped shape dozens of TEDx talks. This experience has molded the power of story as an I*WE vehicle to our own becoming.
Even though this very story I’m telling you now is an expression of my creativity, I didn’t even think of myself as creative until I became an entrepreneur. Then I saw how creativity is both a birthright and a radical force we get to partner with. To change human hearts.
So I had to ask myself: how did I wanna use my creativity to support visionaries within this coaching craft?
As I designed my first programs, I had a business coaching exercise: to write my Hero’s Journey. And another theme emerged: leadership and its role in systems change.
But to do that, leadership has to be joined again with two important things:
spiritual health → leadership → systems change.
And tied with creativity, this is what I*WE is here for.
The first expression of this was for Creative Leadership Masters program from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. In my capstone project, I*WE launched Hearthlight Creative Leadership Lab and enrolled five clients. Gwen was one of them. And I became We…From that spark, the next chapter of I*WE began – a story that belongs to all of us.
