Kelly L. Campbell

Kelly L. Campbell (they/them) is a somatic intimacy coach, eros coach for leaders, sacred intimate and certified cuddle therapist in New York. They are also the author of HEAL to LEAD: Revolutionizing Leadership through Trauma Healing (Wiley, 2024). Their own description of the work is "an invitation to embody divine love" for people who want to feel fully alive and whole. Their stated mission is to bring more pleasure to healing.

Kelly's calling to spiritual sexuality work is guided by the wisdom of Somatic Experiencing® International (SEI), the Institute for the Study of Somatic Sex Education (ISSSE), Shalom Mountain, Body Electric, and Rahi Chun's work on genital dearmoring. They are supervised and mentored by Christiane Pelmas. Their site also lists an International Coaching Federation (ICF) accredited certification through Moving the Human Spirit, and their Insight Timer teacher page names them a Reiki Master.

Before this work, Kelly spent fourteen years as CEO of a cause marketing agency and served as a consultant to Meta and NASA. They founded Consciousness Leaders, a speakers agency. For four years they hosted THRIVE: Your Agency Resource, a sponsored video podcast for agency leaders. Its final episode, in December 2023, was a conversation about HEAL to LEAD and how emotional history shapes the way people lead. Kelly has also contributed similar content to Entrepreneur, Fast Company, and Forbes. HEAL to LEAD looks at the four fundamentals of high-conscious leadership, starting with trauma integration.

Kelly offers several kinds of one-on-one work. Somatic Intimacy Coaching is for people who want to come home to their body, reclaim pleasure, and strengthen self-trust. Eros Coaching for Leaders is built around the idea that the way we relate to desire, boundaries, power, control, intimacy, and surrender becomes the way we lead. Sacred Intimate Work is for people who want pleasure and body-connection to feel safer, clearer, and more alive. Cuddle Therapy offers platonic, intimate connection and the healing power of consensual touch, at the client's own pace. Kelly also gives talks and live demonstrations. Their Substack, The NEW TLC: Trauma, Liberation, and Communion, goes out twice a month.

Kelly co-facilitates in-person retreats and online workshops on leadership, power, intimacy, and eros, with other facilitators, including Candis Fox. Participants describe these as intentional containers where consent is present in every room. Past attendees write about being well fed, being asked to voice their wants and needs, and practicing yes and no within the body. Kelly's leadership thinking also draws on experience outside the office. In a 2019 blog post they describe working with wild mustangs at Windhorse Relations in Ivins, Utah, through the Nomadic School of Wonder, and what it taught them about honesty and trust.

The work is for people who sense that their connection to sensation, choice, and pleasure was interrupted, and who want to return to a self they trust to lead. Clients include people new to this kind of work, such as a first-time cuddle retreat participant, and leaders such as the CEO of BCS Interactive, who wrote that he felt Kelly was "born to do this work." Kelly also works with people who have experienced trauma in childhood or adulthood. Their vision is for more than half of humanity to heal its childhood trauma, so that we may reimagine and rebuild the world together.

Outside their practice, Kelly volunteers with TACT as a Gender Advocate, counseling trans and nonbinary peers. They became a legally Ordained Minister in 2023, and for ten years they have served meals to their community through Soup Angels.