Everyone has a different idea of coaching but I can tell you a bit about what coaching with me means. Coaching is at its core a partnership between the coach and the client to help the client achieve a specific goal that is important to them. It is a thought-provoking, creative and collaborative process that supports the client’s personal and professional growth. My role is to create space for you, hold up the mirror to you, help you plan your next steps, and hold you accountable for taking the actions you committed to take.

What coaching is not

Coaching is not the coach telling the client what to think, how to feel, or what to do. Coaching is not therapy. The coach does not have all the answers. The coach’s job is to support your own deepening understanding of yourself and empower you with the tools to fulfill your potential.

There is some overlap and I may recommend a client work concurrently with a therapist.

Think of it as the difference between going to a doctor and going to a personal trainer. We go to the doctor when we’re physically ill and need medical care. We go to a personal trainer when we’re already healthy and want to become stronger. A personal trainer would want to know if we have any physical injuries so that they design an appropriate training routine, but they don’t treat physical injuries.

Similarly, therapy is focused on understanding your past so that you can heal in the present. Coaching is focused on the present and taking actionable steps to move you towards the future you want. Understanding your past is important to understanding who you are in the present and how I can support you to move forward, and our work together will be focused on designing a practical plan that gets you closer to achieving your goals.

Oprah has worked with a life coach. So has Serena Williams. So has Hugh Jackman.

I firmly believe everyone needs a coach. Every professional athlete and musician works with a coach and the same principle applies to career coaching and life coaching.

Coaching can be transformational.

A coach provides a container for the reflection that is necessary for personal and professional growth. For many clients, coaching sessions may be the only space and time that is just for them - a judgement-free zone where they can truly be themselves, where they can think about what they want (and not what anyone else wants), and where they can play with possibly dangerous ideas that they have never dared to utter to anyone else. My only agenda as your coach is to support you in whatever you want to explore and whatever goals you have for yourself.

Coaching with me is not an exercise in theory. It is practical, real, and actionable. What I offer to my clients is based not only in my experience as a coach but also as a practicing lawyer with over a decade of experience in corporate America as a woman of color.

I’m a pragmatic idealist. I recognize we all deal with competing demands. We all have responsibilities to our friends and family, and we all have bills to pay. My goal is to work with my clients to design an intentional career and life that aligns with my clients’ goals but that also acknowledges the cultural expectations and financial realities that face my clients.

I am a strategic thinker who draws from interdisciplinary sources - philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, etc. - as part of my coaching practice.

I say it like I see it. I believe coaching is most effective for those with the courage to confront what is and the curiosity to explore what could be.