Vickie Mudra is the Founder and CEO of the Institute for Deliberate Practice, where she helps leaders, teams, and mission-driven professionals build resilience, reconnect with purpose, and perform at their best when the stakes are high. With more than 30 years of leadership and development experience across healthcare, public health and safety, and higher education, she specializes in helping people become what she calls “happy, healthy, and mission-ready.”

Long before boardrooms and leadership retreats, Vickie’s heart belonged to the barn. She grew up riding, showing, and competing in western horsemanship and rodeo events and later trained horses as an adult. Horses have always been among her greatest teachers—demanding presence, honesty, courage, and partnership. Those same lessons shape the way she coaches today.

As an ICF-credentialed professional coach and mentor coach, Vickie brings deep expertise in leadership, resilience, and human performance. She is the creator of the Deliberate CARE™ framework, a practical model that helps people strengthen connection, awareness, resilience, and empowered action in high-pressure environments.

Vickie loves supporting the next generation of coaches and high-performing leaders. She believes great coaching looks a lot like good horsemanship: listen carefully, stay grounded, and guide with intention. 

Sydney Hollingsworth is a senior at Oklahoma State University, where she is majoring in Agricultural Communication with minors in Marketing and Entrepreneurship. A lifelong rodeo athlete, Sydney has grown up in the Western industry and continues to compete as a member of the OSU Rodeo Team. Her experience in and out of the arena has shaped her work ethic, resilience, creativity, and deep appreciation for the people and traditions that make the Western lifestyle so meaningful.

Sydney brings a strong creative eye to the Western Integrity Coaching Academy, serving as part of the academy’s creative talent while also developing as a coach in training. With interests in photography, cooking, hiking, and travel, she has a natural ability to notice details, tell stories, and connect with people in authentic ways.

Her background in communication, marketing, and entrepreneurship gives her a unique perspective on how to help bring meaningful work to life with clarity and purpose.Above all, Sydney is committed to helping others grow in confidence, self-awareness, and personal direction. Through her role with the academy, she is learning to combine her lived experience as an athlete, her creative strengths, and her heart for service into work that supports the next generation of Western leaders and performers.

Karen Gray is an ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC) and Mentor Coach with over 16 years of experience supporting leaders and developing coaches and more than three decades in executive leadership and financial services.  Rooted in Energy Leadership principles, Karen believes in coaching the whole person because our thoughts, energy, and level of consciousness shape how we lead, interact, and perform. When leaders shift from reactive patterns to conscious choice, sustainable results follow.

Karen works with professionals navigating growth and high-stakes leadership, helping them close the gap between external success and internal alignment. Her approach integrates energy awareness, emotional intelligence, and identity-level transformation to support clarity, resilience, and elevated performance.As a Mentor Coach, Karen partners with coaches to deepen self-awareness, expand energetic presence, and embody the ICF Core Competencies with integrity and mastery. She is known for creating a space that is both supportive and challenging - where growth is honest, grounded, and transformational.

Fun Facts about Karen: She and her husband, Jason, live in the Denton, Texas, area with their two sons. They love hunting, ranching and traveling.  Karen started working with Rodeo Queens in 2008 and her first coaching client was her daughter, Stephanie. She went on to win 8 queen titles including Miss Rodeo North Texas High School, Miss THSRA Region 3, Miss Rodeo Austin Princess and Miss Rodeo Texas in 2013. She still loves working with them and to date she's coached over a thousand Rodeo Queens in 3 countries and written over 300 winning speeches.