Vara is the private practice of Alise Benjamin Mauritzson, trusted advisor and coach to accomplished individuals, executives, founders, public figures, and the families around them. A stabilizing presence and an emotionally intelligent space to tell the truth, where recovery, leadership, and life are held as one, with complete confidentiality and discretion.
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Across leadership, life transitions, and recovery, the work is the same: a confidential, grounded, emotionally intelligent space where an accomplished person can finally tell the truth, with no one to manage and nothing to perform. Clients come during major life transitions, leadership challenges, and periods of personal or professional uncertainty, when the hardest things to face are often the ones they cannot say aloud anywhere else. The aim is not more optimization. It is creating a life that feels grounded and meaningful, not only successful.
Somewhere to set down the performance and be met as a person, not a position. Everything said is held in complete confidence, without judgment or agenda.
A calm, highly observant presence when the stakes are highest, attuned to the stress, triggers, and isolation that others miss or underestimate.
Genuine care matched with rigor: honest assessment, real accountability, and a clear plan built around the realities of life.
Real, long-term personal transformation, measured by what holds: relationships, judgment, and daily function that stay steady long after the work ends.
Life transitions, recovery, and leadership are not always separate worlds at this altitude. They intersect constantly, and they are served here with the same rigor, discretion, and care.
Proactive, hands-on guidance through the pivotal turns of a life, turning upheaval into a deliberate, well-navigated next chapter. Particular care for those, women especially, stepping into a powerful new chapter and rebuilding life, identity, and confidence on their own terms.
Discreet, white-glove recovery support for those whose stability must be protected alongside a demanding public and professional life. A calm, trauma-informed, and stabilizing presence, attentive to the stress patterns, triggers, isolation, and cycles that quietly destabilize even the most accomplished lives. Grounded in twenty-six years of lived recovery and national certification. The work is designing a life where instability no longer fits.
The emotional intelligence and interpersonal skill, with teams and with family, that quietly govern a leader’s stress, their daily functioning, and how a team actually performs. How you listen, repair, and lead under pressure shapes everyone around you.
The people closest to a client are part of the work, never a footnote to it. Whether steadying a marriage under strain, supporting a spouse through a partner’s recovery, or helping a family communicate and hold together through change, the whole system is included, so the relationships that matter most grow stronger rather than fray.
Beneath every goal sits the question of what it is all for. Clarifying values, designing a vision and the goals to reach it, and building the habits that sustain performance, so success finally aligns with meaning. One person, treated as a whole life rather than a set of separate problems.
Some of the most accomplished people in the world are also the loneliest at the top. Alise works at the altitude where that truth finally has somewhere to go.
She arrived there by way of a career spent leading in high-stakes, high-expectation worlds. As a partner at Benjamin Productions in Los Angeles, she produced critically recognized work, including Ray and its six Academy Award nominations, leading crews of several hundred and budgets in the tens of millions. For years she also produced landmark live events, among them the Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards and Presidential gatherings at Sunnylands, where the margin for error is zero and discretion is everything.
She is also a builder. She co-founded The Cinemas Palme D’Or in Palm Desert and grew it into a celebrated destination, and earlier sharpened her instinct for people as a top sales executive at Chanel International, earning trust in rooms where trust is the rarest currency. Across all of it the through-line was the same: keeping brilliant, demanding people aligned, steady, and at their best.
This is not new work for her, and it is deeply personal. With over twenty-five years of her own recovery behind her, she has spent years helping people find their footing and their way back to their lives. Today that work spans leaders steadying themselves through high-stakes change, individuals navigating profound personal transitions, and those moving through recovery and healing. It is now her sole focus, in private, and she brings to every client the same standard she has always held: complete commitment, meticulous care, and an unsparing honesty matched only by her warmth.
A global life informs all of it. Born and raised in Southeast Asia and educated in Brussels, fluent in English and Swedish with conversational French, she divides her time between Sweden and the United States and works with clients across the world.
Every engagement is designed around your actual life rather than a fixed program. It begins with a clear foundation, moves into focused work at whatever depth and pace fit, and continues for as long as it serves.
An honest, clear-eyed look at the whole of your life: what is working, what is not, and what has never worked. We take account of your relationships, the pressures you carry, and what matters most, so we begin with real clarity and know exactly what to steady first.
Focused, sustained work on what matters most, shaped to your pace and life: vision, life design, sustained and meaningful recovery, behavior change, accountability, communication, leadership, and resilience, woven into how you actually live. There is no fixed timeline; the depth and rhythm are yours to set.
Monthly strategic reviews, goal refinement, accountability, and crisis availability, with continued personal development for as long as it is wanted.
The foundation is where every engagement begins. From there, the work bends to fit a demanding, mobile, and private life. Whatever the need, there is a way to meet it.
Concentrated, fully private weekends for those who cannot step away for long. A complete reset and realignment in a matter of days, repeated whenever it serves.
Alise travels to the client, anywhere in the world, working discreetly wherever they are most at ease, from a home or office to a retreat, yacht, or in transit.
A standing, on-call partnership with priority access, regular reviews, and steady presence between sessions, for clients who want support always within reach.
Rapid, contained support when a situation cannot wait, with a measured, steadying response and absolute discretion at any hour and on short notice.
Engagements extended to a spouse, family member, or trusted member of the inner circle, so change is supported by the whole system rather than carried alone.
Seamless continuity across time zones and schedules, in person, fully remote, or any blend a client’s life requires, with support that never goes quiet.
Vara works with a small number of clients at a time. If you would like to explore an engagement, please share a few details and how we came to be connected.