About

 Hello, everyone. My name is Izzy Kiver, and I want to share my story with you, who I am, where I’m from, and how I got here. I was born in Ukraine in 1993, and my parents had immigrated two short years later to the U. S. They came to New York and eventually settled in New Jersey, and I lived a very modest life.

life up until I was about 20 years old. Hand me downs were the norm, and I spent most of my teenage years actually in the library studying. I was a complete nerd, but also enjoyed fitness, so it was that interesting combination. My life really didn’t start to take this massive spin until I was 20 years old, where I had stopped following the religion I was raised in so precisely, and around the same time, my brother had taken his life.

after having suffered from a brain injury 10 years prior. And that really put me into this whirlwind. It was a complete spin of emotions where I felt like there is nothing I can do to get him back. There is nothing I can do to change anything that happened. And I was filled with guilt, felt shame, anxiety.

I really felt like my life was somewhat meaningless in some sense, no matter how much motivation I had to try to build a successful company, to get into a better role, which I did with time. I graduated from Harvard when I was 25 years old. Shortly after I joined Google, I worked for SAP in the U S government.

I never quite felt fulfilled. I felt like something was missing inside me. I felt like my life isn’t really going anywhere. And no matter how much I accomplish, no matter what level of success I achieve, I still felt shallow. I felt like something was missing. Now, all of this really changed in the winter of 2022, almost a decade later.

I’d spent about half a year trying to get into this closed retreat on Oregon. And it was a retreat with the Santo Daime. It was a ceremony in Ashland. And when I came there, my goal was to essentially find myself. I’ve previously had been to Peru. I had tried everything I could, from therapists to coaching, inner works to healing meditation, everything everyone’s basically said will help make your life better and greater.

It didn’t quite work. I wasn’t expecting much from the retreat, but I felt that at least I can get some level of clarity of what’s the next step in my life. I was actually working in Web3 and Blockchain at the time, and it was right before the incident with Sam Bankman. Of those of you who might know, he ran this massive Super Bowl ad of, don’t lose out on this opportunity to invest in crypto.

Right after there were investigations and he was shortly indicted for stealing billions of dollars from people. And I thought, all right, I’m going to try and get some clarity after this retreat. I was there for two weeks and there were dancing works and it was standing for hours on end singing hymns, working with the medicine, and I was exhausted after two weeks.

It was right coming up on New Year’s, and I felt this is way more than I had signed up for. I was taking more rest than everyone else in the community. I felt like I was not in the right place, but I had asked for this night, had waited for this moment for over six months, and at the end of it all, I thought that was great and exhausting.

I don’t think I’ll be coming back again soon. And at the last ceremony, someone told me, Hey, Izzy, are you coming for the next one? I’m like, What are you talking about? Like, this is good. I’m in a good place right now. So you have to come. It’s a remembrance service. Didn’t you say that you lost a brother?

And that really pulled on my heartstrings. I, I knew that I have to make it. So I signed up for King’s Day. That was a ceremony and I come in. Very few people there. Couple of chairs laid out and this table with the Star of David with a cross going right through it. And I sit down with the Book of Hymns.

With everyone else, everyone starts singing, and I open my mouth, I want to sing along, but no words come out of my mouth. I feel in that moment that my brother’s spirit is right there with me, as if all of the years of pain, anguish, guilt, and just this hate inside me, this pain of why did he go, and why did he tell me what he was planning on doing just goes away in an instant.

It’s replaced with empathy, love, and compassion. And I truly felt his spirit in that moment. I understood that he was my older brother. He was my guardian angel who protected me for so many years. Whenever I was in a pinch, whether it was money for education or just being my older brother and really standing up for me, he was always there.

And I never focused on that part. I was just focused on how he left, but not how he lived. And I realized I had to do something in his memory. I realized that he was Jesus carrying the cross for me all these years, and I need to celebrate that. I need to commemorate that, and I decided I’m going to open a non profit, start a foundation in his memory, to honor how he lived, to be that same guardian angel for others the way he was for me, and that’s how COE was started.

I began by offering mentorship and education consulting and advice for young teens to help them get into better schools, to help them with their life path. Since then, we’ve helped over a hundred students, you know, from seven different countries, over thousands of hours mentored. We started a fearless mindset method coaching to help young entrepreneurs overcome their limitations and setbacks that have been holding them back from achieving success in their ventures.

And we also started a platform that helps anyone that is looking to grow their business, get funding, have the right structure set up in order to be able to grow in life, get to that next step. All built in a single network and a single platform for success and innovation. I’ve even extended with my doctoral thesis and even helping employees all over the world reduce their level of fatigue, be more productive, come back home rested after full days of work because of the revolutionary breakthrough methods that we’re using from the field of patients with traumatic brain injury and helping everyday workers become more effective, healthier, and productive.

And so, Looking back at all those years, the decade that I’ve lived essentially in pain, I can see at the end of it. How it wasn’t all that bad. It was difficult at the time. Every day was so difficult to get through and I felt like it’s going absolutely nowhere. But when I was able to look deeper into myself, when I was able to transform my pain into something that was of greater purpose and higher than myself and with greater meaning and find new ways to help humanity, help others succeed in their life and live happier and healthier lives, That’s when things started to change for me.

That’s when things started to go my way. Not without their obstacles, but overall, the path was laid out before me and things became clear. And so if I have one message or one takeaway from sharing my story is, it’s not about where you come from and it’s not about what you’ve been put through. It’s about how you’re able to transform those experiences into something meaningful for yourself and find new ways to contribute, not only to society, to your community, but to help yourself.

become more useful, more productive, and happier as a human. So that’s my story and I hope you can share yours sometime soon.