My work is rooted in years of nonprofit experience ranging from direct service and operations to team management and interim executive leadership. While deeply committed to the missions I served, I was quietly navigating compassion fatigue and burnout alongside leadership expectations that felt misaligned. For years, I tried to lead, manage, and hold everything together intellectually while my body remained stuck in overdrive.

Eventually, that strain built into a mid-career breaking point. It surfaced in moments I'm not proud of: feeling unfocused and emotionally frayed while preparing to facilitate a training, losing my temper over glitching technology, and finding it nearly impossible to ask for help.

I know now that my nervous system was so depleted that ordinary pressure sent me straight into overwhelm. At the time, I didn't understand that overriding my body was not the same thing as building resilience. And when I assumed a new work environment would fix things, I quickly learned that our patterns follow us wherever we go.

The shift began when my coach introduced a simple somatic exercise. For the first time, I felt how pressure physically landed in my body rather than just analyzing it intellectually. That single moment cracked open my curiosity about what was truly possible, leading me to train as a Presence-Based Coach.

The somatic framework bridged the gap between my existing mindfulness practice and the nervous system patterns I was finally beginning to understand. It allowed me to stop overriding my body’s nervous system and start listening to it.

Integrating these practices changed how I approach growth personally and professionally. Today, I bring that ground-level, nervous-system-informed perspective into my work with clients.

I've been coaching since 2022 and hold my ICF PCC credential. As a lifelong learner, I am an RYT-500 certified yoga teacher, a student of Somatic Experiencing, and Vice President of the ICF Virginia Board of Directors. I continually deepen my understanding of trauma-informed group facilitation, coaching, and movement.

Outside of work, you'll find me practicing that same balance of ease, clarity, self-trust, and gratitude. And for pure joy and connection, I am usually hiking or cuddling with my dog, riding my bike around Richmond, singing and playing guitar in a '90s cover band, getting lost in a good novel, sharing great food, or enjoying deep conversation.