Michelle Duval

Michelle helped found the global professional coaching field in 1997 and was a founding committee member of the International Coaching Federation (Australasia) in 2000. She has certified coaches in over 60 countries and trained executive, business, and personal coaches globally.

As co-author of two influential coaching handbooks—Meta-Coaching: Volume I Coaching Change and Meta-Coaching Volume II Coaching Conversations For Transformational Change—Michelle has contributed significantly to the theoretical and practical foundations of the coaching profession.

In 2016, Michelle published the landmark study "Can Entrepreneurial Success be Predicted?" This research focused on the attitudes and motivations of successful entrepreneurs, identifying critical leadership differences between early and mature-stage ventures.

This groundbreaking work laid the foundation for Marlee's advanced people analytics capabilities, which have achieved more than 90% reliability in predicting personal and team motivations, behaviors, and performance.

Prior to founding Marlee, Michelle ran Equilibrio, a successful coaching practice serving corporate leaders and creative artists. However, she grew increasingly frustrated by the profound disparity in who had access to personalized coaching support—traditionally a privilege reserved for elite athletes, CEOs, and celebrities.

This insight led Michelle to create Coach Marlee, the world's first AI coach, launched in 2020. With a 4.4-star customer rating, Marlee coaches to 1,000 different types of goals, with 90% of people achieving their goals within just four weeks.