"Her (Dr. Sarai Koo) approach is one that is force to be reckoned with and cannot be duplicated"

Anthony S.

“Visionary. Gifted. Anointed. Groundbreaking. Lively. Theatrical. Informative. These are just some of the words that describe the Dr. Koo experience.

What she did in a matter of 8 hours was remarkable.

She came in, peeled back my onion, and helped me dump out all of the stuff that was holding me back. I now have a deeper appreciation and feel much lighter than before.

Dr. Koo is a human kaleidoscope.

She empowers, uplifts, transforms, confronts (in a loving/direct way), breaks down and builds up.

Her approach is one that is force to be reckoned with and cannot be duplicated.

Dr. Koo’s love and investment in people is genuine, compassionate with a touch of tough love.

What I appreciate most about her is that she does not give credit and boast about her schooling. She shows up, delivers and let her anointing and gift speak.

If you are looking to boost the productivity of your workers and enhance company results, I beseech you to contact Dr. Koo immediately.

CAUTION: Have a box of tissues handy as you will need them….in a good way.”

Impacting Leaders Overseeing Seven Cities

Featured Service That Changes Lives

Tammy

Dr. Koo's straightforward, candid approach drove the message home – that we are not alone and that others are going through their own personal issues too. . . I so enjoyed your ability to get to the root of the problem and communicate in a way where everyone could understand. I especially appreciated that you personalized the training and made the information relevant.

Kenisha

Project SPICES has also made a deep impact on my life. Personally since the past two and half months, I have made changes, instead of saying I am going to do it, I am actually doing it. . . . Your workshop changed my life, helped me put things in perspective and forced me to face my burdens. I would love to keep in touch with you . . . Personally since the past two and half months, I have made changes, instead of saying I am going to do it, I am actually doing it.

Vivian

Dr. Koo changed my life personally and professionally. She teaches you to believe in yourself through her teachings. . . You are doing exactly what you were put on this earth to do. . . You are changing the world one person at a time by helping us to believe in ourselves.

Shirley

Words cannot begin to express the thanks and gratitude that I feel for Dr. Koo. From the bottom my happy and now free soul I say “THANK YOU, THANK YOU and THANK YOU!

“Letting Go! After 15 years of not knowing or understanding why you are the way you are, Dr. Koo helped me to identify and let go of the hurt and bitterness I had been holding on to. With Dr. Koo’s help I was able to come out of the emotional box of hurt that I never know I was in. I can honestly say thinking back now there were significant signs of unhappiness and a sense of anger and blame for what I thought should have been. After participating in one of many of her workshops the one that really released me from my box was the one titled “Getting the Junk Out”. Fifteen years of holding on to the “bitter junk”, I felt free, so free I called up to the person and apologized, thanked them for the lesson they had taught me and finally moved on with my life.” “That box I had spent so many years in was no longer my emotional prison. It’s surprising when you begin to change who you have been for so long into someone that you know you were truly meant to be. It is always nice when others notice, but it gives you a better sense of awareness and relief, even a bit of joy, when you begin to notice it for yourself. For example after I got my “bitter junk” out I smiled more, began saying good morning to everyone I came in contact with and started focusing on making myself a more happier person not only for me but my family as well.”

When Project SPICES Transforms Leaders' Lives

Yolanda, Executive Director

Dr. Sarai Koo,

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the time you have spent trying to help me see the value of SPICES and how the elements of the program have the ability to change a person’s life.

Through many of our conversations, I walked away thinking “she has something; I just can’t clearly define it or know how to use it!” It was when I saw the program in action with both our customers and staff that I finally understood the value of SPICES.

We see many customers walk through our doors seeking the right formula to help them secure employment. Often times, successful employment is secured after attending a job search workshop or after a one-on-one session on assessing skills and how these skills can be transferred to different industries.

Other times, customers need much more support. Customers who remain unemployed for too long start to build emotional blocks that keep them from succeeding. This is where SPICES made a difference at the SELACO Workforce Development Board!

SPICES offers a series of techniques that help customers start to expose what exist within them that keeps them from moving forward. The unique relationship and empathy you display as a trainer and mentor allows customers to freely explore the “junk” that keeps them from succeeding.

SPICES puts accountability for success in the hands of the customer.

The SELACO customers who participated in the SPICES project realized that while they said they wanted a job, they were taking no steps to secure that job. SPICES unveiled the reality of their self-destruction and what they needed to do to change direction. Your project gave our participants a forum to rebuild their confidence, self-worth, and establish a direction for success.

My staff who participated in your one-day training session exposed some realities about their own barriers and attitudes that prevented them from connecting positively with their peers and hindered their ability to fully support our customers.

Staff shared that involvement in your workshop helped them see that while they are committed to supporting our customers, there are steps they can take to demonstrate a greater level of empathy and commitment to ensuring a customer’s success.

Dr. Koo, you demonstrate a unique ability to connect with a person and open their eyes to their full potential. The job search sessions you offered our customers are no different than the job readiness techniques we offer in our menu of workshops.

What was different are the techniques you used to develop a relationship with the customers and gain their commitment to trust you and follow your recipe for success. These are the same techniques that my staff hopes to duplicate as they deliver our services and guide our customers to long term employment.

Thank you for finally getting me to the point of understanding the true value of SPICES.

Best Presenter

Dr. Sarai Koo,

It was a pleasure to have you speak at our Department of Public Social Services TEAM Conference in September 2015. You were very engaging, energetic, enthusiastic, and utilized real life examples in your presentation. You really connected with the audience and held their attention!

A survey was conducted of the attendees to get their feedback regarding the conference. One of the first questions asked was "What did you like most about the Conference"? I am pleased to state that # 1 activity attendees enjoyed the most was your presentation. What makes the response even more qualifying is that there we no pre-selected answers to choose from, it was simply a free form question and response.

I would like to thank you again for accommodating our requests regarding your presentation at the conference and am very pleased with the outcome.

Darryl Baker, District Director

Long-Term Project SPICES Transformation

Adrian H.

Before 7 Years

As I see it, we’re all lost. Whether it’s in terms of our future, our fate, our purpose, or our place in the world, there’re always nagging questions in the back of our minds. Ones we can’t answer. Ones we can’t ignore.

The How, the Why, the Who, the When, the What. They hound us like flies, circling about our head and infecting us. And they only get louder as we get older.

We turn every which way to find answers. Like rats in a maze. Sometimes we’re led to chapels and churches and synagogues. Others, are led to needles and pills and blunts. All they offer are the quick solutions; ones that get us through the night until the morning.

The morning. The morning so we can question again. So we can run like rats in a maze. So we can find our way back to the chapels and the churches and the synagogues and the. . .

I was tired of it.

To relieve my questions, I turned towards the MAPS program for guidance. A program that had given me so much. A program that seemed to have an answer for everything.

And it did this time, too. SPICES.

More than a religious doctrine or shallow self-help code, SPICES offered a set of life philosophies worth living by. The answers to those big questions. Who am I? The person I create for myself.

How should I treat people? Equally, regardless of who they are. We’re nearly identical genetically, anyways. All past wrong-doings are in the past, and the past is where our past lives, not in our present selves.

Why am I here? To improve the quality of the human race.

SPICES is more than just another cheap slogan: It houses the secret to living a quality life. After all, don’t we all need a map?

After 7 Years

This, without me knowing it, was my first taste of the SPICES platform.

Topics I remember being discussed in these sessions included:

— What a happy and fulfilling life is, and how we could start to prepare ourselves for living one

— What our life ambitions were, and how we could start to establish paths to achieve them

— Effective leadership tactics - our internal and external motivations for achieving our ambitions

— Many of the racial, social, and economic hardships that impeded upward mobility in our Latinx community, as well as the differences and similarities between the cultures we all came from.

— Ways we could use our ambitions to impact other people positively

. . .

SPICES, on the other hand, is a set of guidelines that moves away from this classic trap. The platform begins with an analysis of the heart and soul of your personal ambition, and ends with giving you the strategies you need to maximize your ability to achieve what you strive for.

How do I know that it works?

I'm one of its early benefiters.

When I was six, I identified my personal ambition to be a filmmaker. I knew that the purpose of my life was to entertain and challenge people through cinematic art.

I had several people, teachers and parents, tell me that becoming a filmmaker would lead to stress and financial difficulty. I was told to avoid the route completely and go into engineering or computer science. At 14, I was almost considering giving up on my ambition and agreeing with many of these adults around me who told me to give up. Why would they lie, after all?

Then I encountered SPICES.

Through SPICES, I gained the courage to follow an atypical life path, and through the teachings of the program, was able to harness my personal strengths to make a film career happen for myself. I have no formal ties to the film industry. My Dad is a dishwasher, my mother is a homemaker.

After helping start a drama class in my high school's lackluster educational curriculum, I was accepted to attend school for Film and TV Production at the USC School of Cinematic Arts on full scholarship. It's the most expensive and selective film school in the country.

I went through 4 years of intense production curriculum, entrusting that my love of impacting people through art and adoration of the film medium would pull through, and it has!

Since graduating from USC's Film School in 2018, I have worked for Fox Sports West, Los Angeles Metro, The National Association for Latinx Independent Producers, Fine Brother Entertainment, and countless other independent ventures. I've sound designed several shorts and a feature film, and acted as cinematographer on three independent feature films and several shorts and music videos.

My personal directorial work, largely in documentary, has been shown in festivals around the country, and I'm privileged to say that I am now making a living doing what I love in a career field I want to be in.

And I'm just getting started. I live to entertain and provoke thought in people through my art.

SPICES helped me realize that. SPICES helped make that into a reality. Sarai's insights will get you far. Trust me."

Frequetly Asked Q

uestion

7 Years Later, Too

Yose

SPICES has been a tool that has affected my life tremendously. It has impacted all the decisions I have made. I have used it as a tool to deal with relationships, work, and for my own soul and spirit. I work with a very vulnerable community. It is a community that requires a lot of patience, empathy, and love. I am currently 24 years of age, it is currently July 2019.

I began working for this agency this past December. I work in a wrap team. Wrap team is a team that is assigned a family, per the child or youth’s sake. I work here because I myself come from a broken home and my goal has always been to help other broken families. It took my family a lot of obstacles, a lot of healing, and a lot of love to get to where we are today.

These families are all referred to wrap services because they have open cases with DCFS, The Department of Child Family Services. The families I work with are in tough situations that seem impossible to overcome. Every day I know I have to be 100 with myself to be able to go out to these communities to help the best way I can. SPICES has helped me a lot along the way.

SPICES taught me that we are entitled to seek for our true happiness. In the curriculum of spices I learned that we are all like cars, we drive in our lane and we all look different. We go all throughout life and sometimes we get damaged and sometimes we get so damaged, we may think we are unrepairable.

SPICES gave me the tools to recognize that a person’s perception of their world is controlled by their way of thinking, their optimism, and their hard work. I have no doubt in my mind that SPICES could help so many open their eyes and mind to viewing situations of life so differently.

SPICES teaches us that it is not effective to blame shift, not good to blame the world for one’s own problems or challenges, SPICES has taught me that.

Every day I run a mile, I meditate, I pray and I think of SPICES philosophy, if it was not for those things working all together for myself, my person would not be in its capacity to help this vulnerable community. We all need food for the soul and SPICES is one element that can help so many conquer their inner demons, to recognize their own person, to become aware of their person’s flaws, and to push forward strong in life.

Join the Wo+Man Up Business Leadership Academy

An ELITE Mastermind Program for women and men to RADICALLY TRANSFORM YOU and your BUSINESS

Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders

As an entrepreneur and business leader I have attended multiple life coaching programs that pale in comparison to that of Sarai’s program. Sarai leads with distinction, passion, and most importantly, her heart.

Latina Leader

Sarai's program, SPICES, shaped me to be a leader who seeks inner reflection. In the time I was there, I learned to serve students and defined my purpose to be involved in education. Sarai inspired me and continues to inspire me to be a bold, courageous leader who transforms the lives of others.

Project SPICES - Transforms Depressive Mindsets - 20 years with depression

I used to hate life. I hated my job, I hated the people I worked with, I hated existing. I hated, felt hopeless, and didn't want to live. I was a depressed person. I felt like a depressed person, I acted like a depressed person, I felt the hopelessness of a depressed person.

And now, after Project Spices...I don't have the inner pain that used to be a part of me all the time…Now, I am a person who has hope.

I am able to think positively. I take on challenges I vowed I would never do. I am able to meet some of the goals I make for myself. I’m not devastated about the goals that I don’t meet; I’m still able to feel hope that I can accomplish those goals.

My job still isn't easy, but when I drive to work I find that I am still able to have positive thoughts about my life. In addition, a lot of the same situations and the same people that once brought a lot of frustration and hurt, I find that a lot of those things don't bother me with the same intensity as before.I know God is with me. I almost feel like this is a time of "promotion" for me. A promotion that has been a long time coming. But is here nonetheless. I feel like God is watching over my life. I am in his line of sight. My past life was painful. But not a waste. Because God was there all along.

In short, life is better. Before, life was so awful that I thought it was a miracle that I would even put one foot in front of the other. The difference is, even though I am still a work in progress and am still taking things day by day, I feel as though I can walk greater distances…

Project SPICES Re-Calibration Relationships Program

Transforming Relationships: We fill-in the gaps of what counselors and therapists could not

Winnie

My fiancé and I recently went through several pre-marital counseling sessions with Sarai, which she ran under her SPICES framework.

First of all, Sarai is wonderfully skilled as a counselor. Having never been in a counseling situation before, I was quite anxious about the whole thing.

Sarai made me feel safe and after some initial awkwardness, I eased into opening up. I appreciated the objective third party view on our relationship, and she was able to effectively translate our points of view into digestible insights that we probably wouldn’t have been able to arrive at ourselves. Sarai is incredibly perceptive and was able to gently pinpoint character traits for both of us that we knew we needed to work on.

Secondly, the ideas that she suggested under the SPICES framework, were quite valuable. Some of them, such as practicing gratitude and taking responsibility for our own actions and feelings, are things that most people have heard of and are universally thought of as healthy relationship skills. However, Sarai was able to explain those ideas in a way that allowed me to see how powerful they can be.

While ideas such as these are certainly inspiring, they must be put into action, and I really appreciated the way Sarai helped us figure out ways to practice the necessary skills in everyday life.

My fiancé and I have been trying out these practices and are seeing improvements in our communication and general well-being.

Sarai was generous enough with her time to do these sessions with us privately, and I think that made a huge difference in the way I was able to internalize her teachings. I’ve heard some of these messages before in large group settings and have always felt inspired afterwards, but there was something about having Sarai’s full attention that made a difference.

Perhaps it was the targeted, personalized suggestions, or the fact that I knew that my partner was on board with me, but I carried these lessons with me in a way that I never did before. I have a habit of looking at the negative side of situations and stressing myself over things that I have no control over.

Sarai honed in on this habit of mine during our sessions and I saw how the negative effect that it could have on my relationship. Since then, I’ve made very conscious efforts to gauge my thoughts and turn them around, per Sarai’s suggestions.

I am a work in progress on many fronts, but with Sarai’s invaluable insights and encouragement, I am committed to the effort of building a relationship that is loving, enriching, and supportive of fulfilling our purposes in life.

A Sprinkle of Project SPICES and This is What Happens!

“. . . Through this program, I also realized my self-worth because . . . before I didn’t really feel like I had a place in the world . . . So, now I feel like I have purpose and everything. . . So, I’m actually going to go for what I want.”

“I have not only learned about the opportunities being a part of this organization offers me, but the meaning of life itself. I know that may sound quite drastic for me to say, but it is true.”

“One big thing that I’ve took in . . . is [that] I’m a lot more confident in myself . . . and comfortable talking to new people or being open. I've learned to take risks and do things that before the program I would probably be too scared to try. I've learned to be more understanding of people such as their situation or way of thinking instead of making myself the victim of "why do I have to change for them? They should change for me." Before the program I would blame others for my own actions or find a way to lie to myself that it wasn't my fault, and now I acknowledge the mistakes I make and grow from them, I can catch myself before I blame-shift.
– G. M. (12th grade, one year after the program)

“[The program] allowed me to see the world in a dramatically different and healing light. I feel that your teachings allowed me to think of alternative methods to approaching conflicts that strays from anger and cynicism . . . you've taught me the strength of kindness and understanding, I've learned to think about context, to try to understand people and the world around me, and to actively navigate my life with integrity and hope. My relationships with my family, friends, and acquaintances have grown stronger because of this. . . . The important part is that you don't tell people what to do or think. You let them be themselves and find their own paths. You just give them knowledge of other choices they can make. It's a method of thinking and not a way to think. This is definitely not common.

“It doesn’t matter what age you are. You always need to self-assess, analyze, and be open to reflect and notice what you’re doing, so you can try to improve and catch yourself. I think I’ve been more aware . . . because I catch myself. . . . I just want to say that it’s never too late for transformation and I think what this has helped me to build is a consciousness and an awareness of everyone around me. Most of all, I would sum it in one word which would be hope. The word ‘hope’ and to say that even though you see me at this age, my journey has just begun, that’s what I’d like to say.”

“You transformed our lives into something better, I will always believe in you and I will always trust you. . . .I can see what others might be feeling because you said about the emotions and everything, so it’s easier to catch what people are feeling. . . . always give compliments to people even though they’re not nice to you.

“[With 10% of the material provided], I have changed 70% of my life. . . .What I learned from these last 13 weeks is to be a different person with myself and with others. Before I would just keep things to myself a lot, now I’d rather share it. Before I’d be more quiet, but now I feel comfortable sharing my thoughts.”

About 3 years ago, I got sick. I went to the doctors and they told me they didn’t know what it was. And that if they did operate in the future, it affects me and having kids. I was very scared, so I told Sarai. She prayed for me in the room back there. Every since then, I haven’t gotten any kind of hurt or any kind of pain anywhere. It’s great because I had the pain over 2 years and it would always come back and leave. Come back. Every since Sarai prayed for me, it hasn’t came back.