Pavla Michaela Polcarova, B.Sc., LL.B., is the founder of CPR Coaching Services, a firm devoted to organizational and individual performance development. The firm's clients have included organizations such as the CGA Association of BC, the Bank of Montreal, Colliers International, Borden Ladner Gervais, LLP, and the BC Paraplegic Association. Individual coaching clients have included executives, business owners, lawyers, accountants, financial professionals, consultants, and health professionals.

It has been remarked poignantly: "Because of the diversity of perspectives and depth of experiences, with Pavla you get about five consultants for the price of one." She has written close to 100 articles on motivation, communication, conflict resolution and negotiation skills, sales and marketing, and humor. Pavla has published a book of original quotes, "Power Thoughts", and audio programs on customer loyalty and change. She has been interviewed for TV, radio, and print media about individual and organizational development.

Pavla was born in communist Czechoslovakia, where she started her first entrepreneurial venture as a teenager by running a successful fashion design business on the country's black market. She escaped Czechoslovakia through the Yugoslavian Alps into Austria at the age of 16, spending a few days in an Austrian jail and six months in an Austrian refugee camp. Her mother and Pavla started a new life in freedom with no possessions and minimal knowledge of English. This experience, along with the observations of others undergoing this same situation, has given Pavla valuable first-hand understanding of risk taking, managing change, uncertainty, and the challenges of dealing with people under great levels of stress - not unlike those experienced by people within organizations undergoing growth, restructuring, or market uncertainties.

Pavla holds a bachelor's degree in science (molecular biology and genetics) and a law degree, both from the University of British Columbia. Despite learning English only a few years earlier, she was a member of the first-place team in a prestigious Canadian national corporate and securities public speaking competition. Pavla is the former founder and president of Straight A Learning Centre, a tutoring agency serving high school and university students. As a lawyer, Pavla practiced corporate and real estate law, and consulted with clients on negotiation strategies in litigation cases.

Pavla has gained further perspectives on learning and training through sports and research of athletic performance.She swam competitively, rode in long-distance bicycle races, and has attained a green belt in Tae Kwon Do. She has owned and trained dogs since age 11, having competed in numerous military-sponsored dog-training competitions as a teenager. With having trained her own horse for the last five years, she has been able to live one of her childhood dreams. Athletic training has taught Pavla the principles of peak performance, goal setting, and self-discipline. Training animals, especially working with horses, has given Pavla the opportunity to learn and apply non-resistance training (also known as horse whispering) techniques. She has been able to transfer these extremely effective trust-building and communication techniques to her work in conflict resolution, influence and team building.

A great benefit to Pavla's clients comes with her ability to combine practical and logical left-brain approaches with right-brain creativity and big-picture thinking. On the creative side, Pavla has won fine art competitions as a teenager. She was able to begin learning to play the piano, another one of her life-long dreams, at the age of 27. She has since achieved Royal Conservatory of Music Level 8. She had inherited her grandfather's violin and has started to learn to play it. Although, to date, her best achievement has been to torture the violin into producing a rather screechy version of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", she hopes to improve her track record in the coming years. Lastly, in 1999, she took a stand-up comedy class and, since then, has turned her love of laughter into regular stand-up comedy shows and corporate shows that teach and entertain.