I Get It

I know what it’s like to feel successful on paper, yet still sense there’s more. More growth. More impact. More meaning. Or simply a different way forward. While I’ve spent more than 30 years leading teams, building businesses, navigating transformation, and coaching others, it has been my own journey of resilience, reinvention, and learning that has prepared me to help others navigate theirs. Like many successful professionals, I know what it feels like when a career doesn’t go according to plan.
At age 30, just three weeks after accepting a new job, moving across the country to California, selling my home, and with all my belongings somewhere in transit, I was unexpectedly fired. It was a shock and a punch to the gut… and to my ego.
But using some of the same strategies I share with my coaching clients today, I went on to thrive through a series of unexpected turns and new chapters.
I joined the leadership team of one of the country’s largest retailers. I advised private and public organizations through complex change. I helped reshape how government CIOs thought about technology and the cloud. And in my senior roles at AWS, I’ve helped rebuild stressed relationships, create successful partnerships, and build high growth, recurring revenue businesses from white space.
But the part of that story that matters most to my coaching isn’t the résumé. It’s what I learned about rebuilding when the path changes, and about seeing possibilities that aren’t obvious yet.
How to find and mobilize resources. How to create value, opportunity, and yes, financial security, in new ways.

Those experiences taught me that setbacks don’t diminish us. They deepen us. They help us learn how to reinvent. They can make us more human, more empathetic, and often more capable than we would have been otherwise.

And many of the strategies I now use in my coaching are the same ones I’ve used throughout my own career to navigate uncertainty, create new paths forward, and turn disruption into opportunity.

A Few Fun Facts

I grew up in Apple Valley, Minnesota, where my parents sold vacuum cleaners door-to-door to help pay the hospital bills from my birth. My first job was wrapping chocolates and caramels on an assembly line at Abdallah Candies. I spent much of my childhood upside down as a gymnast, and I still enjoy being upside down occasionally today. After 25 years in corporate America, some people still describe me as a “hippie in disguise.” Reinvention has been a recurring theme throughout my life.
I’ve reinvented myself many times:

Collegiate athlete → Corporate retail analyst
Undergraduate student → Entrepreneur-in-training living in Tokyo
Graduate student → Wine Export Analyst → Management Consultant
Management consultant → Startup leader
Back to management consulting → Successful sales executive

And there have been plenty of additional passions and pivots along the way: I became a certified yoga teacher and developed a deep belief in the power of meditation.
I went from marathon runner to gravel cyclist following a partial knee replacement, another unexpected pivot.
And now, I coach amazing people like you. Every chapter taught me something valuable about growth, identity, resilience, and possibility. Today, I can see how all of those chapters prepared me for the work I do now: helping successful people navigate their own moments of change and create what’s next.

Professional Background

I began coaching in 2010, helping high-potential leaders, many of them former NCAA athletes, navigate career growth and life transitions. My own professional journey began as captain of the University of Minnesota Women’s Gymnastics Team, where I earned a degree in Business Management with a minor in Japanese.

After earning my MBA in International Management from Thunderbird Graduate School, I built a career across some of the world’s most respected organizations, including:

My career has spanned corporate leadership, management consulting, technology and organizational transformation, strategic growth, sales, partnerships, and business building. I’ve helped organizations improve processes, transform how they operate, embrace new technologies, and navigate complex change. More recently, my work at AWS has focused on building strategic partnerships and helping a leading consulting firm continue to be a top firm and trusted partner to Amazon. Across every chapter, I’ve built my career in highly competitive environments grounded in authentic leadership, trust-based partnerships, curiosity, and sustained growth.

I don’t coach leadership from the sidelines. I bring three decades of lived leadership experience into my coaching, combining a practical, business-minded perspective with a deeply human approach.
01  Executive leadership experience
02 Transformational coaching expertise
03  Elite-athlete discipline
04 Curiosity and authenticity
05  Strategic thinking and decisive action
06 Humility and humanity
Executive Leadership Experience
Strategic Thinking, Possibility, & Decisive Action
Authenticity and Influence
Transformational Growth
Elite Athlete Mindset
Human-Centered Approach
To help successful
professionals create
careers and lives that
feel meaningful,
fulfilling, and aligned.
Because success isn’t always about achieving more. Sometimes it’s about understanding what more means to you now. And sometimes, the next chapter isn’t about becoming someone different. It’s about becoming more fully yourself.
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The Story Behind the Logo

I’m so glad you clicked on the logo. It tells a story, and it’s one I’m pretty passionate about. I’m a big believer in being grounded in the Earth while staying connected to something bigger than ourselves. I believe we are each part of something greater, and that every one of us carries our own unique gifts, strengths, and special magic.
That belief is at the heart of this logo. Look closely and you’ll see roots grounding to the Earth. They represent where we begin: grounded, connected, and rooted in who we are. And at the center, you’ll find a compass. Because I believe we each have an internal compass. It points toward who we are, what matters to us, and where we want to go. And inside that compass is gold. That gold represents the special magic I believe every one of us carries within.
Sometimes we know exactly what our gold is. Sometimes the demands of work and life, the expectations we carry, and the pressure-filled worlds we navigate can slowly pull us away from it. My coaching is about helping people find that gold again, understand it, and put it to work. Because finding your gold is only the beginning. As we reconnect with ourselves, we grow, stretch, and evolve. New possibilities emerge. Stay grounded. Find your compass. Discover your gold. Let yourself grow. Embrace what makes you unique. And remember that you are part of something bigger. That is the spirit behind Compass Within Collective.