The Hoffman Podcast S11e3: Shirin Oreizy – A Deep-Felt Appreciation for Life
Shirin Oreizy, engineer and coach, found herself hindered by a pattern of perfectionism as she embarked on a career transition. She’d known about the Hoffman Process for five years, but she didn’t think she needed it. When she saw the effects of this pattern of perfectionism and how it was blocking her from creating her dream and vision, she knew it was time.
Concurrently, over these five years, Shirin and her husband had been on a long, painful IVF journey. At the time of her Process, Shirin was beginning to recover from the trauma of this journey and the grief of loss from four miscarriages. She was in the process of accepting that she and her husband would never be parents.
During her Process, everyone knew Shirin as Namaki, which was her childhood name. Since no one in her Process knew her given name, her classmates and teachers called her Namaki. As her week at the Process unfolded, Shirin found that rekindling her relationship with Namaki was the path back to her true self and self-love. As she tells Drew:
“I think what I really love about Hoffman specifically was that there’s this imprint. There’s this somatic, felt, body-sense imprint of love in me. That it will never go away; and you know, the patterns come … and I forget myself, but I have access to come back to this deep imprint of self-love.”
At the Process, Shirin worked with Namaki’s moments when she felt deeply unsafe. Through this, Shirin was able to experience a “falling back into trust with my place in the world.” She realized there’s a larger arc to her life story than she had been holding onto through control.
Content Warning: Before you begin, please know that this conversation contains descriptions of “reproductive trauma, loss, and grief.” Please use your discretion.
More about Shirin Oreizy:
My journey began as an engineer at Nvidia, where I learned the art of solving complex problems. Later, I founded and led a behavior design agency, partnering with both scrappy startups and Fortune 500 giants for two decades. Along the way, I became fascinated by how people truly transform. How real change happens within both teams and individuals.
Today, I focus on coaching and speaking because I know how pivotal life’s transitions can be. My work draws on a lifelong passion for understanding what drives us as humans, shaped by years of hands-on experience with leaders, teams, and individuals. I weave together insights from a range of disciplines:
- Personality Profiling: Enneagram & Big Five (self-understanding and connection)
- Hoffman Process (healing old patterns, renewing a sense of “enough”)
- Neuroscience (building resilience and hope)
- Positive Psychology (cultivating optimism and curiosity)
- Behavioral Science (creating sustainable habits and agency)
- Conscious Leadership Group (leading with awareness and presence)
Outside of coaching, I’ve shared my work on human behavior with audiences at TechCrunch Disrupt (Audience Choice Award), as a guest lecturer at NYU, Columbia, and Stanford, and as a keynote speaker at major industry events.
I live in San Francisco with my husband—also a Hoffman grad—and our dog, Pickles, a Hoffman grad in spirit (he’s mastered the art of welcoming love, especially when treats are involved). We love exploring stunning landscapes around the world that challenge us physically and mentally. Since Hoffman, we’ve launched a passion project, Life of Adventure and Change, where we’re mapping out a decade of travel adventures to share with friends. Our goal is to build a community of conscious travelers who inspire each other to embrace new adventures and experiences.
Learn more about Shirin at her personal website.
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As mentioned in this episode:
Conscious Leadership Group
• Diana Chapman, Co-Founder
• Listen to Diana Chapman on The Hoffman Podcast: Experiencing More Heaven on Earth
The Enneagram
• Enneagram type 3: “Threes try to deny their shame, and are potentially the most out of touch with underlying feelings of inadequacy. Threes learn to cope with shame by trying to become what they believe a valuable, successful person is like.” Read more about the Enneagram 3 and other types.
Core shame messages
• Read more about how students work with shame at the Hoffman Process.
Experts on shame on the Hoffman Podcast
• Chris Germer on the Hoffman Podcast: The Antidote to Shame
• David Bedrick on the Hoffman Podcast: Unshaming Your Shame
Farsi, or the Persian language
In vitro fertilization (IVF)
• Thaw, the documentary on egg freezing that Shirin participated in.
Denali National Park, Alaska
• Maintaining the Character of the Denali Park Road Beyond Mile 15
Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt quote from his Citizenship in a Republic speech given on April 23, 1910:
• The quote is from this passage called “The Man in the Arena.“
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds;…” Read more…
Shirin, her grandfather, and family:
