Ken Hood, the founder of Thalassa Consulting LLC, is a deep listener, a gifted speaker, and his passion is to create spaces in which others can discover who it is they are meant to be and craft lives of purpose.
For 20 years Ken has served as a Presbyterian pastor in the PC(USA). An intellectual traveler by nature when Ken wondered if he could really fit in any single religious tradition he was given this wisdom: “There have always been pastors who are keepers of answers. And that’s fine. But, there have always been pastors who are keepers of questions.” And for his entire career in ministry Ken has tried to be a keeper of questions- helping others dive down into deeper, more interesting, and more frightening questions. While absolutely at home as a contemplative Christian, Ken appreciates and leans upon other global wisdom traditions, especially Taoism, Zen, Advaita vedanta, and mystical Judaism. A Benedictine oblate with the World Community of Christian Meditators, Ken keeps one foot firmly grounded in the Christian contemplative community while his other foot is free to explore the treasures of the world’s great religions and philosophies. He loves working with people who are discovering their own authentic spiritual pathway. Whether they are deconstructing from a narrow, controlling form of religion or are just discovering their own way, Ken can help you discover a spiritual way of being that’s right for you.
Ken is a graduate of the Hudson Institute of Coaching and a member of the International Coaching Federation. He has worked with leaders in tech, law, medicine, design, as well as religious and nonprofit leaders from diverse backgrounds helping busy professionals live their lives with greater wholeness and integrity. He also holds a doctorate in leadership from Duke Divinity School and has worked with clergy from a variety of denominational backgrounds helping them to be the leaders God shaped them to be in a church that is rapidly changing.
Ken is also a trauma informed coach who is trained to work with legal plant medicines and psychedelics to assist clients in facing the painful things they have experienced and finding a new wholeness and freedom through processing and integrating these wounds. A little before COVID Ken experienced a traumatic car accident on his way to the Oregon coast. He was trapped in his vehicle overnight with his broken leg pinned in the side of the car. After freeing his leg, Ken was able to kick out the sunroof and escape his vehicle, crawling up a steep embankment with his right arm broken in two places and his left leg broken just below the knee. Ken was diagnosed with PTSD, and after many attempts he found healing through the Psychedelic Somatic Institute’s Psychedelic Somatic Interactional Psychotherapy model. So impressed with his healing, Ken became trained in this modality and uses this model along with tools from Internal Family Systems (IFS) with clients to access some of the deepest layers of themselves. For some clients silence is enough for them to do this work; other clients find cannabis or prescription ketamine to be the assistance they need to face their traumas and heal from them. Legal psychedelic work isn’t for everyone, but for those it helps they can be life changing medicines.
A poet, Ken also studied Conversational Leadership at the Invitas Institute founded and led by David Whyte. This is not the poetry your high school English teacher forced on you. As David Whyte puts it, in real poetry we find “words against which we have no defenses.” What’s leadership but seeing things other people aren’t seeing? That’s poetry. What’s leadership but courageously and vulnerably showing up fully? That’s poetry. What’s leadership but using honest words in real conversations? That’s poetry. Ken sees poetry as a spiritual practice that helps us discover and explore ourselves and others. He has led poetry workshops for all levels and offers poetry performances on themes like robust vulnerability, Hudson’s Cycle of Renewal, and nondual spiritual practice.
A graduate of the University of Texas and Princeton Theological Seminary Ken did his doctoral work at Duke University coming the fields of behavioral economics under Dan Ariely and leadership under Greg Jones. Ken continues to teach leadership to doctoral students at Duke Divinity School as well as Portland Seminary.
Ken has authored two books published by Cascade Press an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers- The Irrational Jesus: Leading the Fully Human Church and The Irrational David: The Power of Poetic Leadership.