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Hello,
I’m Dr. Adriana Chavarín-López, Founder and CEO of Sabbaticalize. Educated at USC, Stanford, UCLA, and Harvard, I bring a career shaped in classrooms, schools, non-profits, and district leadership. I help leaders and teams transform their systems from the inside out, leading with clarity, purpose, and lasting impact.
My Story
For more than twenty-five years, I've worked alongside educators as a teacher, principal, district leader, university instructor, executive coach, and Senior Facilitator with the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Public Education Leadership Project.
Throughout my career, I've noticed something.
We ask leaders to solve increasingly complex challenges, yet we rarely give them the space to pause, reflect, and lead with intention.
I know this not only as a leadership coach, but through my own journey.
Several years ago, a life-changing health diagnosis unexpectedly forced me to step away from work. What I initially viewed as an interruption became an invitation to rethink how I wanted to lead, live, and serve others.
That experience became the foundation for Sabbaticalize.
Today, Sabbaticalize is about much more than taking a sabbatical.
It's about helping leaders and organizations intentionally create the space to pause, reflect, realign, reimagine, and re-enter stronger than before.
Whether I'm coaching an individual leader, facilitating a district leadership team, supporting strategic planning, or designing organizational learning experiences, my goal is always the same:
To help leaders build healthier organizations where people and performance thrive together.
If you're looking for a thought partner to help you navigate complexity, strengthen your leadership, or renew your organization, I'd love to partner with you.
Welcome to Sabbaticalize.
My Bio
Dr. Adriana Chavarín-López is a leadership coach, systems strategist, and educator who partners with senior leaders to do the deep inner work required for transformational change.
A daughter of Mexican immigrants and a lifelong educator, she brings lived experience, academic rigor, and real-world leadership to every coaching relationship. She believes that sustainable systems change begins with self-awareness, aligned action, and values-driven leadership, because you cannot transform a system until you first transform yourself.
Adriana began her education career as an instructional assistant and bilingual teacher, experiences that shaped her lifelong commitment to equity, inclusion, and student-centered learning. As a school principal, she led with a whole-child philosophy, championing culturally affirming and joyful learning environments. She spearheaded initiatives in art, music, yoga, social-emotional learning, and dual language immersion, while also building an Apple Distinguished technology program, a Latina mentorship initiative, and an award-winning school garden. She forged strong community partnerships and empowered families as co-leaders in school transformation.
Dr. Chavarín-López earned her Doctor of Education Leadership degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where her dissertation, Transformation by Design: Leading and (Un)Learning at the Logan Memorial Educational Campus and the San Diego Unified School District, focused on designing and implementing systems and structures for transforming prenatal-to-12th grade education. She was also a recipient of Harvard’s Education Entrepreneurship Fellowship for her innovative work redesigning early childhood systems. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Education from the University of Southern California, a Master’s in Education Administration and Policy Analysis from Stanford University, and an Early Childhood Management Certificate from UCLA Anderson School of Management.
A former Senior Director in the San Diego Unified School District, Adriana currently serves as Senior Facilitator for the Public Education Leadership Project (PELP) at Harvard University, a lecturer in Advanced Studies/School Law at CSU Stanislaus, and CEO and Founder of Sabbaticalize, LLC, a leadership development company dedicated to transforming leadership through deep reflection and powerful coaching, empowering leaders to move forward with renewed purpose and bold vision.
