About Darren Stehle

May 2026 — For close to 10 years, I have been building the ethics that underpin my work — slowly, with curiosity, and with a great deal of stumbling along the way.

I was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD as a child, navigated gay shame well into adulthood, and spent years learning the difference between showing up as others expected me to be, versus standing up for my own conviction and truth. I studied chef training, pursued a Master's in German Language and Linguistics on a queer theory topic, worked in senior roles at LGBTQ+ non-profits and charitable organizations, have operated a private coaching practice for the last decade, and became a certified MindMap Mastery Neuro-Coach trained in the behavioural neuroscience of transformational change. I now serve as Director of Development at Lambda Scholarship Foundation Canada, where I help build the organizational capacity and funding to support the next generation of queer leaders in post-secondary education.

None of that is the point.

The point is that I am a queer person who has been thinking seriously about ethics, leadership, and what it means to live with integrity — in a world whose default order was not built to include me — for a very long time. That thinking produced a coaching practice dedicated to supporting queer and trans people, years of writing, and eventually a book.

The Book

Queering the Way: Navigating Leadership Ethics from the Margins is where my philosophy lives in its full expression.

It draws on the wisdom of the Tao Te Ching, queer theory, and the realities of leading ethically in a world that is, at this particular moment in history, making that increasingly difficult. It is grounded in six principles — FEEL, KNOW, THINK, VOICE, DREAM, LEAD — not as a framework to adopt, but as a set of practices to embody and make your own.

I wrote it because I needed it to exist. I also wrote it because the queer leaders, change-makers, and social entrepreneurs I work with needed something they could hold in their hands, something that said: your experience of living outside the heteronormative status quo is not a liability. Instead, it is a form of ethical intelligence, exactly what leadership needs more of.

If you want to understand how I think, what I believe, and whether this is the conversation you have been looking for, my book is the most honest place to begin. It is available here.

The Work

I work with queer and trans leaders, change-makers, and social entrepreneurs who are done compromising and ready to lead with the kind of clarity, direction, and conviction that does not require the permission of the status quo.

Queerness has been central to everything I do — not queerness as identity category alone, though I claim that too, but queerness as a way of knowing. Growing up outside the heteronormative status quo means learning early on that the world is not wholly supportive of your existence, and that thinking for yourself is not optional, it is a survival skill. That vantage point produces something remarkable: a capacity to see from the margins, to observe the structures that others take for granted, and to build an ethics without a fixed blueprint.

That is what inspires the work I do and what I help you bring into full expression in your leadership.

My approach integrates the self-mastery principles and natural virtues of the Tao Te Ching, the behavioural neuroscience of transformational change, and the political and philosophical richness of queer theory. I approach coaching not as a system, but as a living practice that begins where all leadership actually begins: with how you feel, what you know, and whether those two things are aligned.

Where I live and how I work

I live in Montréal with my partner Christiaan and our dog Scooby, near the Lachine Canal, where we’ve lived for the last three years and is the most “home” I’ve ever felt.

I work with clients one-to-one in focused engagements designed around where you actually are and where you genuinely want to go. If you are ready to explore what that looks like, let's talk.

Stay in the conversation

If you want to stay connected with my ongoing work, I publish essays, reflections, and short videos on queer leadership, ethics, and what it means to lead with integrity in a world that wasn’t built to include us. Subscribe on Substack, where I publish all of my new ideas.

— Darren