The dark sent me down to the roots.
The light called me back up.
I rise because of both.
The Long Way Here
I grew up in the Santa Cruz Mountains, in the Redwoods. It was beautiful and it was chaotic. Sometimes in the same afternoon. Barefoot tree house hangs and family dinners that felt like magic, right alongside the kind of chaos no kid should have to navigate. Both were true. Both shaped me.
My mom left when I was young. My parents struggled with addiction. My siblings got split up, and I was the oldest, which meant I became "the responsible one" before I knew how to do long division. Lucky me.
I grew up fast. I learned how to read a room before I could read a book. I learned how to take care of people, how to keep things moving, how to make everything look fine even when it absolutely was not. Those are real skills, by the way. They got me through. They also cost me more than I knew at the time.
For most of my adult life, working harder was my answer to everything. Something off? Work harder. Something hurting? Work harder. Feeling something I didn't want to feel? You guessed it. Most people who knew me would have said I had my shit together, and by a lot of measures, I did. Gold star for the girl who can carry it all and still show up with a smile.
I built a career. Nearly thirty years of leadership across retail, hospitality, and law firm operations. Running businesses. Developing teams. Holding a lot at once. I raised two boys, and that's its own complicated, beautiful, humbling chapter I'm not going to pretend was tidy. I built a life that looked, from the outside, like someone who had figured it out.
But I knew. There was always this thing underneath that knew there was more. And I couldn't reach it from the place I was reaching from.
What I Do Now
The shift didn't happen all at once. It built. Slowly. Ungracefully. With a lot of "what the hell am I doing" mixed in with moments of actual clarity.
It built through realizing that what I'd been running on since childhood had been driving my car for a lot of miles. And I mean a lot. It built through the body work, the inner work, the kind of work that doesn't fit on a LinkedIn bio and that nobody claps for. Slow, real, often uncomfortable, and worth every unglamorous second.
And it built through this thought I kept coming back to: if it took me this long to find this, what would it have meant to find it sooner?
That's when I knew. The work I do now exists so other people don't have to take the long way around. Or at least not alone.
I work with humans. Capable, complex, sometimes stubborn, often brilliant humans. Some feel the pull toward something deeper. Some are navigating a transition they didn't see coming. Some are already thriving and want more of what's working. Some don't know what they want yet and that's a perfectly good place to start. What they share is a readiness to be honest about where they are and a willingness to do the real work to get where they want to go.
What I bring is heart, intuition, nearly three decades of leadership experience, a sense of humor that has saved my life more than once, and a willingness to say the honest thing. I'll push when pushing is right. I'll pull back when it's not. I'll make you laugh when you need to breathe. And I will always tell you the truth, even when it's the harder thing to say.
Who Finds their way here?
People who hold a lot and make it look easy. People who are hard to read and secretly wish someone would bother trying. People who built the whole damn thing and are sitting inside it thinking "now what?"
People who need a kick in the booty. People who need a hand to hold. People who need a soft landing. People who need all three in the same conversation and aren't sure that exists.
People who want better routines but can't stop sabotaging the ones they start. People who are confident in the boardroom and spiraling in the parking lot after. People who are genuinely doing well and just want to do it more intentionally.
People who aren't sure who they are yet. People who used to know and lost the thread somewhere along the way. People who have no idea where they want to go but know it's not where they've been standing.
If you're still reading, that's probably your answer.
One honest conversation. That's where it starts.