Writing about yourself is freaking vulnerable! The last few weeks I’ve been rewriting my bio for the first time since 2018, and it has been so much harder than I expected. It actually might be the hardest thing I’ve done professionally in a long time.
My identity has evolved so much in the last 8 years. I’ve taken on enormous projects and expanded my skillset beyond my wildest dreams. I’ve had my best years in business. I’ve started an entirely new life in Maine.
The entire context in which I’m operating now is different. And Covid. And AI. And this world.
Not to mention, I marked 21 years in business this summer and I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the next 20-some.
How am I supposed to sum up everything I’ve done and am doing now? How am I suppose to predict where I’m going and make my value prop focused yet open enough to bridge my way there? What do I really want next?
How am I supposed to get people to like me?
I’ve helped my clients write (and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite) their promotional materials for the last 12+ years, but doing it for myself? That’s an entirely different matter. Doesn’t everyone find it easier to solve other people’s problems than your own?
So I’ve gone through 6 or 10 versions now, had a trusted circle of friends and family pick it apart, and I think maybe I’m getting closer to something that feels right. Or feels true. Or at least feels like I’m on the right track.
How’d I do? It’s up on my About page and in my LinkedIn profile. Be brutal, okay? I can take it. Maybe. I’ll try. Thank you.
People call me when the stakes are high and they aren’t sure what to do next—or when they know exactly where they’re headed and don’t want to go it alone. At the heart of this work is redesigning our relationships with money, power, and love.
As the founder and principal of Vicarious Partners, a public benefit corporation and Certified B Corp, I coach and advise design and product leaders, artist-activists, executive directors, CEOs, and boards who want to leave things better than they found them.
Across organizational and private engagements, I go beneath the presenting issue to get at the human dynamics that make complex problems in leadership, governance, and culture so hard to solve. I balance empathy and candor to help my clients shift their narratives, navigate forces of change, stoke creativity, make clear decisions, and move what matters forward.
My longest-running client relationship is with Pace University, where since 2016 I have coached more than 30 senior administrators, faculty, and staff in the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems, and more recently in the Office of the Provost, helping lead operational and cultural overhauls. Our work has contributed to record enrollments and revenues, new programs and centers, galvanized teams, and more than a dozen leadership promotions.
I have led community mediation that reformed governance practices at the Drupal Association, coached emerging leaders in the 170-person design organization at Banco de Crédito del Perú (BCP), and conducted cultural assessments that sparked leadership transitions at a crisis intervention platform and a civic tech innovation center.
I serve on the boards of Indigo Arts Alliance, Maine’s only Black-owned and Black-led arts incubator, and the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust. I mentor entrepreneurs at the Roux Institute and am a founding member of Maine’s Jewish Community Relations Council.
Previously, I spent a decade as a UX consultant with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Seamless, Boxee, and WNYC. I am named as a co-inventor on a U.S. patent with American Express.
A two-time graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, I hold a Master’s in Human-Computer Interaction and a Bachelor’s in Professional Writing and HCI. I am a Certified Integral Coach through New Ventures West, a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with the International Coaching Federation, and have extensive training in Nonviolent Communication.
I write on my blog Pleasure & Pain, co-host the podcast Designing Yourself, and speak at conferences and corporations worldwide, including multiple appearances at SXSW and An Event Apart.
A proud third-generation New Yorker, I now live in the coastal town of Falmouth, Maine (Wabanaki Territory) with my husband Fredrick. We spend our evenings and weekends exploring the beaches, trails, farm stands, culture, and community that make Maine the way life should be.
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