About John Sawyer
John Sawyer is the Founder and Lead Coach of Open Way Coaching, a Career Path and Executive Coaching Firm based in Washington, DC. John works with mission-driven professionals to align their professional path with their strengths, their values and the way they want to live. John is recognized as a Associate Certified Coach by the International Coach Federation and as Certified Professional Coach by the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC).
Prior to beginning full-time coaching, John spent more than fifteen years in advocacy, legislation and public policy, promoting health care access and social justice at the federal, state and local level.
For more than nine years, John served as the Director of Federal Affairs at the National Association of Community Health Centers in Washington, fighting to expand access to health care for low-income and underserved patients and communities. Prior to that, he worked on Capitol Hill as a policy aide to two Members of Congress. During a stint in local government, John worked to improve and integrate a complex local human services delivery system in and around Pittsburgh, PA. For one delicious year, he also worked in the kitchen of a french pastry shop in New Zealand. He currently keeps a foot in the policy world as a part-time consultant with Waxman Strategies in Washington, DC.
John has worked with individuals, small teams, and entire organizations, as well as local, state and federal government agencies to solve problems and improve people's lives. In coaching, John taps into his own core values: an insatiable curiosity about humans and what makes us tick, a belief in personal relationships as the basis for progress and self-compassion as the means to better balance and a fuller life.
As a painter, photographer, and sculptor, John also identifies as an artist—and loves to bring the spark of creativity into his coaching work with clients.