I’m Rina Winston (Karina Winston), a Certified Professional Coach (CPC). I help high-capacity professionals and entrepreneurs at a turning point strengthen their self-leadership by shifting the patterns that shape how they focus, decide, work, and follow through.
My work is for people navigating identity transition, decision paralysis, capacity strain, or a season where self-trust has eroded. My clients usually know more than they think. They have a sense of what they want, but need the mindset, structure, and strategy to turn insight into sustainable success.
I’m also a Project Management Professional (PMP) with over a decade of experience supporting executive teams. I blend psychological insight with systems thinking to help people do more than improve performance. The work is about understanding the patterns beneath it, so they can shape the system rather than be shaped by it.
How Did I Get Here?
When I worked as a staffer to a Member of Provincial Parliament at Queen’s Park in 2014, it felt like my first real look behind the glass of power. I was close enough to provincial decision-making to see how much of it was shaped not only by policy, but by performance, positioning, pressure, and human behaviour.
I’m grateful for those experiences because, as I continued my career through partisan politics, government, non-profit organizations, and consulting firms, they taught me that institutions are made up of people playing roles, protecting incentives, following scripts, and navigating politics. No matter where I worked, I kept finding the same invisible forces shaping people’s decisions, and for a while, I allowed them to shape mine too.
Until enough was enough. In 2023, I decided to set out on the adventure of self-employment, contracting, and now coaching.
Credentials & Training
Coaching Certification
Rina is professionally trained through the iPEC Coaching program, one of the most established and research-backed coaching schools in the industry. Her training emphasizes energy leadership, conscious decision-making, and applied coaching psychology, allowing her to work skillfully with patterns related to stress, performance, identity, and leadership under real-world pressure.
- iPEC Certified Professional Coach (CPC) Program
- Energy Leadership Index (ELI) Certified
Previous Career
Before moving fully into coaching, Rina built her career inside complex systems where people, power, and performance intersect. She has worked across government, politics, non-profit, and consulting environments, supporting senior leaders, managing operations, and leading projects in high-stakes, high-pressure contexts.
Her background includes roles in public service and political offices, organizational consulting firms, and mission-driven non-profits. Across these settings, she developed a deep understanding of how decisions are made, how systems break down under strain, and how emotional dynamics quietly shape leadership, culture, and outcomes.
This coaching practice is a culmination of my career, the intangible rules and structure that govern the world we live in and how we fit into that bigger picture by leading ourselves with agency.
Develop Your Internal Compass
This is self-leadership for people rebuilding how they live, work, decide, and lead.
Most people don’t realize they’re living a two-track life.
One track is the life they’re living. The other is the constant management of who they believe they need to be in order to keep that life.
Self-leadership begins when those two tracks become one.
“From the day I met Rina, I knew I had to reach out. Her knowledge and ability to guide people who feel lost had a bigger impact than I expected. Our sessions helped me make smarter decisions, realize my true passion, and turn it into consistent income. I went from feeling stuck and overwhelmed to booked and busy, and I wouldn’t be here without her guidance.”
— Francesca N, Entrepreneur, Mississauga ON