Press
Just Ask. A Profile of Kasia Urbaniak, Founder of The Academy.
"What Urbaniak offers is refreshing because it eschews all the usual tropes of female-focused self-help. At the Academy, you don’t have to strike the right power pose or find your inner Kali or even lie prostrate on a couch and explore how your emotionally withholding father fucked you up with men. Rather, Urbaniak’s approach shares much with Cesar Milan’s, whose book on dog training was a revelation to her when she first started working in the dungeon."
Want to be more assertive in life? This former dominatrix will show you how
“Kasia Urbaniak has mastered the dominant position with men, and is a master at unpicking power dynamics. She’s a female empowerment coach in a city where power is a naked game. “I don’t teach anything related to BDSM or sex, just the application of power dynamics,” Urbaniak tells me. “It’s about the communications that women carry that either make them go speechless, or afraid of coming across as too bossy or too needy.”
Work and Life Lessons from a Former Dominatrix
“When it comes to power dynamics and influencing others, former dominatrix Kasia Urbaniak is a seasoned professional. Now, she’s harnessing the skills honed in her past profession – combined with lessons learned in martial arts and Taoism – to empower women. Her lessons, though, aren’t about dominating; rather, she focuses on leveling imbalances between men and women, particularly in the workplace.”
Take It From a Professional: Here’s How You Handle a Man
"The Academy draws from dominatrixes’ psychological, rather than physical, tools. Political applications of BDSM make sense when you consider the gender roles that trap women in submissive societal positions are the same as those locking men in dominant ones."
Take It From a Professional: Here's How You Handle a Man
“So the point is not her leather riding crop. Her mission is to teach women how to employ a dominatrix’s rhetorical tools in any scenario when there’s a power imbalance with a man, whether or not it’s about sex. The scenarios happen everywhere…”
A scuola da Kasia, l'ex «dominatrice» che insegna il potere alle donne
"'For millennia' she explains, 'we have been trained to be good girls. To accommodate other people's needs before our own, to be polite and inoffensive at all costs, and to never, ever ask for what we want.' We have become, in other words, domesticated liars, forgetful of our own deepest truth."
A dominatrix reveals a sure-fire way to maintain a lasting, healthy relationship
"The idea of being good, by being low maintenance, is an absolute falsehood," Urbaniak says. She argues it's often what people don't say in conversations that's most dangerous to their future. This speechlessness can be a learned habit, but the easiest way to break out of it, she says, is by saying something in the moment. Bringing up an awkward comment, or giving immediate feedback about something that makes you uncomfortable, is the easiest way to change the situation.”
A Dominatrix Reveals the Secret to Power Dynamics
"Kasia apparently does teach with a riding crop but the crux of her teachings comes down to a simple element of power dynamics that psychologists have studied for years. And, this secret element can be used in dealing with people in a wide array of situations beyond the bedroom. The key to taking your power or giving it away comes down to a simple question: Where does your attention go?"
What I Learned at a Verbal Self-Defense Camp for Women
"The thing that struck me the most was the incredible range of age diversity in the class: from college students to a grandmother and every age in between. The night concluded with a middle-aged mom saying, 'We as women are always taking bullets in life and now knowing how to [verbally] respond will act as our bullet-proof vests.' Let us all reenter this world with a bullet-proof vest for life."
Why A Former Dominatrix Might Just Become Your New Career Coach
“The goal is not to cede your power by answering an unwanted question or submitting to someone else’s framing of the interaction, which is especially difficult to resist when you’re caught off-guard. Meeting a question with a question sounds simple, but it puts you in the headspace of realizing that you have the means to change the flow of a conversation or upset an unequal dynamic.”
Ladies, Get Out Your Whip
“The latest must-have in a woman’s career arsenal is Kasia Urbaniak, a New York-based professional dominatrix with 17 years of experience under her belt (or whatever). The proprietress of The Academy, Kasia has an almost cult-like following among working women. (Ruben Flores, a veteran of Doctors Without Borders, is her co-partner.)”
Roundhouse Radio: An Interview with Kasia Urbaniak
“In the wake of #metoo verbal defense has never been more in the spotlight. Former Dominatrix and the focus of a recent New York Times feature, Kasia Urbaniak, Founder and CEO of the Academy in New York comes on to talk about how she is helping women find their voice in the wake of #metoo.”
Foundations of Unshakable Power
“On some level we’ve totally neglected primal communication. We’ve neglected that there’s an entire conversation happening between bodies that you cannot speak over. You can talk, talk, talk say powerful things, say disempowering things, say whatever you want, but you can’t neglect that level of communication.” - Kasia Urbaniak
Her Rules Radio
"I teach women to communicate powerfully and to influence others. Not in a way that involves force, but in a way that involves influence and transformation, so they not only get what they want, but they actually create a new ally." - Kasia Urbaniak
Dominatrix Offers Classes To Help Women Address Sexism and Harassment
“Instead of answering or refusing to answer the question, Urbaniak instructs women to fire back, querying the man about why he asked the question in the first place and then probing his answers. The comeback can be cutting or overtly friendly, and testing the reaction they provoke is informative and fun. “He’s on the spot, and you regain your footing,” Urbaniak says in the Times piece.”
La academia que enseña empoderamiento femenino
“Factores como la educación de hombres y mujeres son determinantes a la hora de pensar en generaciones futuras con una reducción importante de violencia de género, y es por esto que en Estados Unidos existe La Academia, un espacio, que aunque es sólo para mujeres, cuenta con un método particular, impartido por Kasia Urbaniak y Rubén Flores, que le ha permitido a cientos de ellas encontrar un espacio de aprendizaje para luchar contra el desequilibrio de género.”
The Art of Becoming
“Kasia’s classes teach women to handle and express their inherent power in a way that our culture still, and to an absurd degree, does not. This is an important and neglected fact in our fight for equality. We are discouraged from being unabashedly ourselves. The Academy is helping to redress that imbalance, one woman at a time. The interview also covers some interesting and arguably untrodden ground regarding interactions between women and men: as in previous interviews, Kasia brings unique ideas and has a knack for expressing what is too often left unsaid.”
El látigo, la nueva forma de lidiar con los acosadores
“La Academia recurre a las herramientas psicológicas del acervo de una dominatriz, más que a las físicas, como las esposas, antifaces o plumas. Y es que el BDSM usualmente busca expresarse contra los roles de género establecidos, que promueven que las mujeres tengan posiciones sociales sumisas y que los hombres sientan que tienen que ser los sexualmente dominantes; esto es lo que los hace recurrir a las dominatrices para escapar, de acuerdo con Storm. "Se educa a las mujeres en la sociedad para que sean dóciles como gatitos. Los hombres piensan que tienen que ser una especie de macho alfa", dijo.”
Top Things I Learned From A Dominatrix
“Kasia Urbaniak is a well-known dominatrix with work published in Business Insider, Forbes, and the New York Times, among many other news sources. Her experiences inspired her to create The Academy, an in-depth training program for women seeking to build their confidence at home, at work, or in life itself. She spoke on issues faced by both women and men in today’s society, with a specific focus on overcoming a lack of confidence in all kinds of social situations. Here are ten key takeaways from the event.”
Former "Queen" career coach talks about how to be uncontrolled
“Answering a question with a question seems simple. However, it is important to recognize that there are ways to change the flow of conversation and break up imbalanced power relationships. What is needed is not a "right" answer. You know you can win if you don't answer the question at all.”
Work and life lessons from a former dominatrix
"Right now in the conversation about sexual harassment, in the conversation about women speaking out, they're speaking out many years later with so much built-up resentment. And still, we're not talking about that choiceless silence when a woman freezes. And what simple tools a woman can use to start unlocking the freeze and being able to speak." – Kasia Urbaniak
Women Lawyers Should Apparently Seek Advice From This Dominatrix To Get Ahead In Their Careers
Kasia’s mission is to teach women the lessons of the dungeons. “I train women to train men in their lives,” she explains, adding that women still have problems advocating for themselves. “They have significant jobs, but they can’t get their significant other to make coffee or get the sex they want,” she says. “And even if they’re ascending in their jobs, they’re stuck.” Too often, she says, “they’re not getting credit?” She sums up: “They suck at asking.” Not getting credit, fear of asking, freezing at critical moments: All this has a familiar ring for female lawyers.
How women can wield power to get what they want at work and in their personal lives, according to a former dominatrix
“Being a dominatrix is a job that involves a surprising power paradox: you're the employee, yet you're also the one who's calling the shots over a submissive client. It's you holding up the whips and the chains, even though they're the one who's paying the bill.”
This Former Dominatrix Can Teach You To Be More Assertive In Life
Kasia Urbaniak started an online discussion group, but now, in part thanks to Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement, it is a booming business. Urbaniak told The Guardian, “I don’t teach anything related to BDSM or sex, just the application of power dynamics. It’s about the communications that women carry that either make them go speechless, or afraid of coming across as too bossy or too needy.”
Verbal Self Defense Dojo
"I had a school for a little bit before I had a political movement and a feminist movement in my living room, which moved into a building, which went global. Every single bump in the news ends up meaning that there are more women who want to be trained, who want to have new ways of speaking, communicating, expressing their power, getting what they see is right for all justice, their own self-interest, navigating their relationships, the good girl patterns, not being addicted to pleasing people anymore. This territory...there are so many things to change and overturn." – Kasia Urbaniak
Verbal Self Defense Dojo
“With #MeToo there was a lot of men in the world who went ‘ok, but nobody told me. What do you mean, I should have known?’.” – Kasia Urbaniak
Power and Influence – 10 Years of Tedx Rosario
“More than eight thousand people gathered to hear diverse voices on the topic of “To the 10th Power”, including Kasia Urbaniak , who studied for 17 years to be a Taoist nun and her diverse learning led her to teach about power dynamics and influence to hundreds of women.”
Femdom: Mastering Life
It’s been over a decade since Urbaniak traded her whip for a career as a female empowerment coach. She’s inspired by the effects of Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein on the #MeToo movement, “women carry communications that either make them go speechless, or be afraid of coming across too bossy, or needy,” Urbaniak explained. For Urbaniak and her students, watching Hilary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election was like a window into the act of “compression.” Women shutdown and are taught to comply, to minimize in the presence of male bullies. “They don’t know why they’re doing it,” she said.
Female confidence gurus inside the feminist fad taking New York by storm
Finding out what you actually want, however, is particularly hard for women, Kasia argues, because societally women are encouraged to suppress their desire in favour of being “nice” and answering every question with a habitual ‘I’m fine!’ As I looked around the auditorium it was clear that desire was what I was encountering right now. Suppressed female desire finally given permission to make itself heard.
Dominatrixes as life coaches: Gains to be made from submission
“The key point here is that every person, even if they regard themselves as submissive, also has drive to power – but experiences can teach you to deny your power.
Power isn’t always right and submission isn’t always wrong but if you have the awareness to see them both at work in your life you can create a better balance.”
Friction Salon 26
“When do direct and open confrontations hinder the achievement of shared solutions; and when, instead, are they necessary? How can we discern when the social etiquette that tells us to be “always nice” is used instrumentally as a silencing mechanism? Is the business of (cautiously) introducing frictions in our lives an act of resistance?”