Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and what brought you to this particular career path?

What brought me to coaching… I had been in academia for a couple of decades, also in the photographic industry as well as teaching very traditional forms of Hatha Yoga and meditation. I’d gotten divorced and moved to a tiny town in upstate NY and was trying to figure out what to do next. I knew I didn’t want to return to academia right away and while lying on a friend’s front yard on a summer day, she pointed out that everything I’d done in my life was literally or figuratively teaching people how to see the world in new ways. She said, “you should be a life and career coach with everything you have done already in life.”

Because the universe always seems to work this way — the following week I got a call from a yoga colleague who invited me to be part of her coach certification program as an “older student”. I said yes and six months later received my first coaching certification and was coaching 20 clients for the year. It was crazy and a blast and amazing all at once.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

The first important character trait for me is being truthful. Being truthful allows me to open to new perspectives, be flexible and continue to grow and learn. Being truthful also means I get to ask questions when I don’t know something, or can’t do something. This showed up fairly often when I was working in research and development of imaging systems at Johnson & Johnson. I was part of a team building and designing systems and was usually the only non-engineer or physicist in the room. Because truth is one of my core values, I would ask the most basic questions about what and why we were designing. I saw a lot of eye rolls and smirks but most of the time, my “dumb question” led to an awareness from the point of view of the consumer or end-user, that the engineers hadn’t considered. Because I was willing to ask and show my “ignorance” what we developed ended up being more user-friendly or effective. I was really proud of what we created as a team and also excited by how much I learned in that group.

My second trait is resilience. In my life, I’ve moved almost every four years since I was 13 years old, had a complement of varied jobs from university lecturer to yoga teacher, website builder, colour management consultant, bookkeeper, author, and now public speaker. I also lived in my car for a time when I was in my late teens, got into and out of an abusive relationship, and recently discovered that I’m neuro-divergent on the Autism spectrum. Being resilient essentially means being knocked down and growing from the experience. It enabled me to ditch the abusive relationship, meet a great guy whom I loved and worked to create two separate businesses with. Resilience saw me through getting kicked out of prep school and going on to graduate with honors from college. It helped me work a full-time job while going to university for my BFA, MA, and MFA. And it’s helped me be a solopreneur all my life.

How have habits played a role in your success? Can you share some success habits that have helped you in your journey?

Well, (and here I’m laughing as I write this), changing habits is one thing I’m really good at… but that’s the nature of being a coach — we help transform people’s lives by changing their beliefs and habits. Let me start with beliefs. I’d say that the first success habit I have is taking my beliefs out once a year and really examining them. What I mean by this is that all beliefs are simply thoughts we’ve thunk so often that we think they are true and then we forget to reconsider them from time to time. When I find myself feeling stuck I take some time to consider what assumptions, AKA: what beliefs am I holding to in the situation? This can take anywhere from five minutes to five weeks or more depending on how deeply held my belief is or how stuck I feel. But when I start to see it for what it is, a repeated thought, then I have the opportunity to keep it, toss it or modify it so that I can keep growing or moving forward.

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