Lainie Allen

Lainie Allen, M.Div., founded Meaning By Design to help others find fulfillment in their lives by being attentive to and pursuing their hearts’ truest desires.

A certified Spiritual Director with more than 20 years of mentoring experience, Lainie challenges clients to explore what is and what could be, as she walks alongside them on a journey towards meaning.

Lainie’s passion for life direction and spiritual formation became clear early in her career. After earning a B.A. in Psychology and M.A. in Education, Lainie taught grades K-6 for seven years. While thrilled to prepare students intellectually and mentally, Lainie felt drawn to inspire them to understand their strengths, desires and callings on a deeper level.

In 1995, Lainie co-founded Allen & Allen Leadership, where she mentored emerging adults navigating vocation, relationships, religion and life transitions. She became a certified Spiritual Director in 2007 with Christian Formation and Direction Ministries (CFDM), and has led numerous retreats and workshops on spirituality, prayer practices and holistic living. In 2015, Lainie graduated from SMU Perkins School of Theology with a Masters in Divinity. With Meaning By Design, Lainie combines her religious studies and life coaching experience to help clients look into their hearts, examine what they really want and build a life of deeper meaning.

Lainie lives in Dallas with her husband, Daniel. She enjoys yoga, the outdoors, and the arts and spending time with her daughters, son-in-law, and two grandsons!

Daniel Allen

Daniel Allen inspires, educates, and coaches leaders to bring out the greatness within themselves and their organizations.

He brings to this role a broad range of experiences: youth pastor, teaching pastor, founder of a leadership formation practice, church planter coaching, and executive coach to mid-career and high level leaders. He is the author (with Bobby Clinton) of Nehemiah: Focused Leadership (2003) and Summoned: Stepping Up to Live and Lead with Jesus (2015).

Daniel earned M.Div and D.Min degrees from Fuller Seminary, where he focused his studies on leadership development. He has taught emerging and mid-career leaders at Lee University, Fuller Seminary, Bethel Seminary, and RTS – Orlando.

Daniel holds certifications in the Focused Living® Coaching Process, utilized by more than 15,000 people worldwide; the Tom Paterson^TM StratOp Planning Process, used for over thirty years to enhance organizational alignment in industries worldwide; the Church MasterPlanning® Process; and the U-Cipher Executive and Team Development Assessment.

When Daniel isn’t working with college students or coaching leaders, the self-proclaimed “plodder” is usually training for a half or full marathon. Though he lives near the campus of Southern Methodist University, Daniel remains faithful to his beloved Carolina Tar Heels.

Sarah Plummer Taylor

Sarah Plummer Taylor is a University of Virginia graduate, former Marine Corps Intelligence Officer, and 5-time Military Olympic Athlete who is on a mission to empower those who have experienced trauma or difficult life events to “align and shine” and then “just roll with it.”

As a dynamic, bold, and humorous holistic health counselor, motivational speaker and yoga teacher who travels North America and the UK teaching resilience-building and integrative health and wellness, Sarah speaks about how mindful choices impact our ability to lead, our capacity to thrive, and our ability to connect. She is the co-owner of a wellness LLC that provides unique, somatic-based stress management workshops both domestically and internationally and is the author of Just Roll With It: The 7 Battle Tested Truths for Building a Resilient Life. Additionally, she has been published in peer-reviewed journals on a variety of topics and has presented as an invited speaker at academic and corporate conferences and summits.  From Capitol Hill to mainstream media to corporate, academic, and military communities, Sarah's unique message of resilience has been changing lives since 2012.