Fried like your
favorite pickle.

After an amazing 15-year run in the tech world building and leading various teams at Slack and Emma, in 2023 I needed to make a change. I was completely burnt out. Fried just like your favorite pickle.

Since leaving Nashville in 2015 where I was a big fish in a small pond, I moved all across the country from one big city to the next, climbing the corporate ladder as if it were a jungle gym. I learned so so much, and met all of my best friends along the way. I have no regrets about it.

On the outside, you couldn't beat the type of life I was living. I was leading one of the best Customer Success teams in the industry, in the best city (NYC) and making more money than I'd ever dreamt of making before. I was able to say yes to just about anything I wanted to do or buy. I worked really hard to get there staying the path that was the most linear and predictable, one that would lead me to bigger and better things if I just kept going.

But on the inside I started to feel like I was a caricature of myself. As I'd sit down for my back-to-back zoom meetings each day, I'd imagine myself like a muppet booping, bopping and mashing the keyboard to get my work done. I was anxious all of the time, my body was swelling in weird places. And while my calendar was always busy with work and social events every night, I was really struggling to find peace.

I hired a health coach because of all of the swelling. Turns out that's what massive amounts of cortisol does to your body (go figure). While we started out talking about diet, exercise and what you would expect out of a health coach, she encouraged me to start meditating. Within two months, the familiar panic I was used to greeting me each morning — it was gone. Within six months, she'd helped me work up the courage to quit my job — to get off the well-worn path that I was on and change my pace. (She is much more than a health coach by the way!) She helped me realize that I needed to rest and recover. I needed to hard-reset my whole life. And she helped me give myself permission to do so. That's when I discovered the power of coaching, or being coached more specifically.

That fall I left Brooklyn and moved to a little treehouse situated in Laurel Canyon, one of LA's most storied neighborhoods, where musicians and artists have always gone to reinvent themselves. I was hoping to do the same.

I began to realize just how much of my identity had been tied up in who I was professionally and by what accolades I was able to achieve. Self-worth and productivity were synonymous to me. I spent a lot of time trying to unlearn so many of the things that had shaped my path, that had been hardwired in me. For the first time since probably ever, I was learning to rest, like really rest. And honestly, it was hard and I felt guilty about it. Sitting still was brutal for me. While I had a couple of ideas and dreams of what I wanted to do next, there wasn't anything that I was able to put any real oomph behind. I was still paralyzed by all of the shoulds I'd learned to judge myself by, the fear of burnout and the fear of getting it wrong.

But in my newfound stillness (and over a year of fits and starts), I finally started to be able to hear my inner voice again. I came back online. And what I heard surprised me with how obvious it was. The part of my career I'd always loved most wasn't the strategy decks or the promotions. It was the conversations — the ones where someone felt truly seen, or finally got clear on what they actually wanted. I'd been coaching people my whole career, which I already knew I loved, but I wanted to do it from a different angle this time — incorporating all of the things I'd learned from my time in that canyon. I wanted to help people not just with the career stuff (which I'm really good at, by the way), but also to help them figure out who they are underneath all the noise they've been living inside.

I want to be clear: I'm not here to tell you to quit your job or blow up your life. I did that — and it was the right call for me — but alignment doesn't require a dramatic exit. It just requires honesty. Some of my favorite work is helping people find more of themselves within the life they're already living: the career they're in, the relationships they have, the city they call home. Noise is everywhere. You don't have to blow it all up to hear yourself again.

So I made it official. For the first time, I'm building something from my heart and not just my brain. That's exactly the kind of work I want to do with you if you'll have me.

Oh, and I'm in Lisbon now by the way. I left my little treehouse in LA last fall with my pup to try on the life of an expat. I guess the city bopping is still in my system. ;)