About Amba
Amba Gale is a Master Coach, celebrated author, and dedicated advocate for personal and professional development. With a profound commitment to serving others through uncovering their inner wisdom and leading lives of purpose and fulfillment, Amba has spent over four decades transforming relationships and organizational cultures through her expertise in Communication and Leadership Development.
A graduate of UC Berkeley with honors and later completing a business mastery program at Darden College, Amba’s journey has been marked by a relentless pursuit of knowledge and a passion for teaching.
As the founder of Gale Leadership Development, Amba has collaborated with a diverse range of organizations, from Hewlett Packard to Town and Country Markets, from Pacific Coast Fruit to Pulse Heart Institute, fostering environments where communication thrives and partnerships flourish. Her acclaimed book, “Crossing Thresholds, Island Reflections,” awarded a Gold Medal Global Award for Nature Poetry in 2019, reflects her talent for blending poetry, photography, and introspection to explore themes of transformation and new beginnings.
Beyond her professional achievements, Amba finds inspiration in nature, residing on Bainbridge Island amidst the beauty of the Puget Sound. An avid traveler and inspired storyteller, she finds joy in sharing her experiences and wisdom, while cherishing moments with her creative adult daughter and musically talented husband.
Amba Gale continues to inspire others to embrace change, pursue their passions, and create extraordinary futures, embodying her commitment that every individual has the power to live authentically and with meaningful purpose.
Endorsements
In Crossing Thresholds, Amba Gale deeply touches upon themes that are relevant to living our lives with meaning, gratitude, and wonder. Through journaling, photographs and poems, taken and written in the Isle Royale area of Lake Superior, she shares her own story of tapping into Silence, accepting change, opening new beginnings, encouraging her reader to engage their own journey across whatever thresholds are theirs to cross.
“Whatever else future historians will have to say about the year 2020, it will be seen in retrospect as a year of crossing thresholds. This fact alone would make a book entitled Crossing Thresholds, timely. But Amba Gale’s book is even more timely for another reason, at this hour: In quarantine on account of the Coronavirus pandemic, countless people are learning again to be enchanted by picture books, the way they used to be as children. Thus, Amba’s book is coming out exactly at the right moment. Master photography and poetry like hers would have power to enchant eyes and hearts at any time. But now, our eyesight rinsed by tears and our hearts widened by silence, we are ready to be guided across inner thresholds we will have to cross, before we can cross the outer ones awaiting us. Amba Gale’s work can provide much needed guidance. Blessings on its task!”
—Brother David Steindl-Rast, Benedictine monk and founder of Gratefulness.org
“I love Amba’s book, and I love her poetry. We are tuned into the same channel. I thank her for bringing such beauty and wisdom and truth into the world. Crossing Thresholds provides a gift of healing for all of us, individually, collectively, and globally, as we cross this threshold time, between worlds, being taught lessons by Mother Earth, who, herself, has had difficulty breathing. Poet David Whyte says, in his poem, Loaves and Fishes, “People are hungry and one good word is breath for a thousand.” This is a book that will feed and nourish.”
—Lynne Twist, author of Soul and Money and cofounder of
Pachamama Alliance
“To live deliberately, that’s why Thoreau went to live in the woods. Amba Gale has provided an inspirational, and practical, guidebook to the rest of your life. It will help you, every day, to truly regard your life, your soul. Along the way you may come to recognize the connectedness of all things, living and otherwise.”
—Rolf O. Peterson, author of The Wolves of Isle Royale:
A Broken Balance
“Through a marvellous cornucopia of poems, pictures and practices, Amba Gale precisely defines the human being’s journey through life in all its manifest forms and expressions. Truly this is the wonderful outcome and upshot of a life lived to the full. Here is an expression of the wisdom of one seeker and searcher; a DIY manual which birthed from her insight and good judgement, Amba has fashioned for us a work of great transformation and healing for our troubled earth. This is surely a contemporary Scripture where every verse, every image and every contemplation is a prayer for the universe. Franz Kafka, wrote: ‘A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.’ Now is the time, reader, to take up this literary cleaver, Crossing Thresholds, and begin cutting through to the fish hole of your soul.”
—The Rev. Nóirín Ní Riain, PhD, spiritual singer, author, teacher
and soul searcher
“Stunning. Wisdom-drenched. Elegant. Beauty beyond words, yet her words will lead you toward discerning a more meaningful life. Allow Amba’s guidance to seep into your soul, your heart, your mind, and maybe most of all, your eyes. Amba has been preparing for this work all of her life. Let it be her gift to you.”
—Donna Zajonc, Master Certified Coach, Director of Learning and Coaching, Bainbridge Leadership Center
“I have had the privilege of seeing this book grow from a handful of seeds that Amba let me glimpse by the River Shannon in Ireland in 2018. Those little seeds of pure intention and potential have blossomed into this exquisite flower that you now hold delicately in your hands. This flower is a bridge – a vanished bridge that is brought back into the sight of our minds’ eye. Each word in this book is a stepping-stone for us to skim across the surface of our soul. With each turning page we turn further toward that something that is never disappointed, and forever
encourages us.
—Owen Ó Suilleabhain, Singer, Composer, Speaker, Founder of
Turas D’Anam, “Journey of the Soul”
“This book can transform your life! Amba’s invitation to pause through poetry, inquiry, metaphorical photography and journaling gives each of us the opportunity to move again, to let go and journey to new places where your next threshold will advance you to greater destiny. Breathe this book into your heart. A whole new exciting world awaits you.”
—Bill Weymer, President and CEO, Town and Country Markets,
Poulsbo, WA
“The book is wonderful. I’ve always loved applied art projects, and this intersperses and encourages the use of the poems in context of reflection. The poems achieve the stillness and awe of the beautiful island. It is a guide for all of us to break open our hearts and the hearts of others through poetry and the yearning and personal demand for presence. Bravo.”
—Mícheál Ó Suilleabhain, Poet, Singer, Author of Early Music,
a book of poetry
“I doubt there’s been a more important time to acknowledge our collective ‘Threshold’ and to explore our own ability to self-reflect. Amba, authentically sharing tender and vulnerable moments, takes us right to the edge for a deeply personal dive. No need to fear, even as the canvas of our days change, she skillfully walks us through.”
—Kathryn Lafond, Intuitive Healer, author, Seasoned with Gratitude 250 Recipes & Blessings Celebrating the Greater Nourishment of Real Food
“Amba is a woman of rare courage and open heart. Her very personal journey, expressed so tenderly, beautifully, and powerfully in these pages, speaks to and touches our humanity in surprising, delightful, and meaningful ways. Crossing Thresholds reaches within us and simultaneously awakes, soothes, and inspires. This is an intimate book, at once both delicate and piercing. I relish its soulful truths and predict that, like me, you will find yourself returning to it again and again, discovering new joys in each visit.”
—Sanford (Sandy) Robbins, Producing Artistic Director, Resident Ensemble Players, Professor and Chairperson, Department of Theater, University of Delaware
“I was surprised by the connection I felt, a shared awareness of how to experience physical and spiritual life. For the photographer, poet/author or student of life, awareness and insight are essential to defining and grasping concept. Amba’s photographs are inviting portals to her island experience. Let each be an invitation to the words they inspired.”
—Mark Alberhasky, MD, Contributing Photographer, NIKON, Photo educator, author, inventor
“One small line in any poem in Crossing Thresholds looms large with wise guidance for our own thresholds we are unsure of crossing, and then learn to cross them with trust and courage. When I read Crossing Thresholds, I am reminded of Rilke’s advice about living into questions. Whether I’m in a dialogue with Amba, attending one of her courses or reading her poetry I’m always left inside a profound question. Crossing Thresholds is our most useful guide for today’s challenges and how we can learn to listen for what life is calling for us in us to move towards and fulfill.”
—Jan Smith, President & Founder of Center for Authentic
Leadership, Inc.