I have spent much of my life assisting people seeing their possibilities they could not yet see for themselves. That work began long before I called myself a coach.
As a young woman, I trained as a stylist and discovered how much I loved learning a skill, practicing it, and assisting someone to feel more confident and beautiful. Later, I built and led a national sales organization and learned how to build a team, teach what worked, and create learning systems others could use for themselves.
That curiosity led me into leadership development. I worked with people and companies across different industries, assisting them in how to bring clarity to their goals and turn good intentions into measurable action. My work has always begun with the person in front of me: What do you want? What stands in your way? What could would they want in order to move forward? How would it look, feel. How much, how many and by when.
When I met my husband, Ted, I brought that same approach to his work in the financial industry. Together, we developed ways to teach people how to understand complex choices before making decisions. Ted brought his financial knowledge; I brought my experience in education, communication, and building learning systems. We loved working together.
Years later, our work became connected with Woodbridge, a company that presented its offerings as commercial lending opportunities. I developed educational and communication systems for people on our team on educating our clients in that business. I believed the information we were given and worked to make it understandable to others.
In December 2017, four years after we began this offering, Woodbridge filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Authorities subsequently exposed a Ponzi scheme that ran through the Woodbridge company. There were 310 companies like mine who raised money for Woodbridge. People who had placed their trust and money in Woodbridge were harmed. I do not want my own experience to obscure theirs.
From the outside, my visible role in communicating about Woodbridge could make it appear that we knew how the company was operating behind the scenes. I understood why people asked hard questions and why some judged me by that association. What they could not see was the difference between the business Woodbridge represented to us and the fraud that was later uncovered.
When Woodbridge collapsed, Ted and I were trying to understand what had happened, respond to people who needed answers, and work through the consequences in our own lives. We hired legal counsel and shared information with our network as we learned it. At the same time, Ted was seriously ill and after 189 nights in hotels while he was at Moffitt Cancer Center. My Ted died on May 23, 2019.
I would never ask someone who lost money to set aside their pain in order to understand mine. I can only speak honestly about what I knew, what I experienced, and the person I have become to be throughout my life. It was a painful period of uncertainty, public judgment, and private loss. It also taught me how quickly an outward picture can become someone’s entire story.
My work today grows out of both the achievements and the difficult chapters of my life. I know what it is to build something, to believe in people, to discover that something was terribly wrong, and to begin again after loss.
I still believe in clarity, honest conversation, and the capacity to grow. When I share my wisdom with a person, a company, an organization, we work together and discover how to identify what you truly want, recognize what could be holding them back, and create practical steps toward it. I bring decades of experience to that work, along with a deeper understanding that every person has a story others cannot see.
You have come here because you may have asked to know more. I am woman who has led, learned, loved, grieved, questioned, and continue forward. I am inspired and filled with curiosity about you and what we could create together.
