My brain had all kinds of fear-based objections as I prepared for a nine-day training with the one and only John Overdurf. But I’m a coach, and I know a thing or two about dealing with the fear brain… so I did the work.

Many of my clients are conscientious, hardworking, type A women in male-dominated industries. When they hear the word "visibility," they wince.

If that's you, good. Your instincts are sound. But before you fix your visibility, figure out which visibility problem you actually have.

If you've spent your career in a male-dominated industry, "not playing politics" often becomes code for staying quiet, staying small, and letting other people take credit for work you did.

I coach women who are done with that self-defeating loop. They want to lead in a way that's honest, that earns positive influence, and that doesn't cost them their integrity to get it. Here's a case study of what that looks like in action and words.

I teach my coaching clients a concept called Graceful Assertiveness. It requires extending an ocean of grace back to ourselves as we do the courageous work of undoing generations of conditioning. Conditioning that taught women to feel like, and accept being treated like, and paid like second-class citizens.

Maybe you've never negotiated for yourself before in your career. You've seen how things work behind the scenes, so your gut says that whatever you ask for, they'll object to it anyway. Why bother risking "no," when you've already got your plate full?

Sometimes when I coach my clients through their own objections like the above, I'm surprised by their ingenuity, resourcefulness, and outcomes.

Let me tell you about one of my clients, Nadine.

"I used to get paid more somewhere else." That was the sentence. Almost an afterthought, dropped near the end of an offer negotiation that had gone beautifully. And it was enough to make my client spiral in doubt. Here’s the coaching I gave her.

If you’ve been curious about executive coaching but have hesitated because you’re not sure what it entails or whether it would help you, here's what former client SJ Crawford shared on LinkedIn about working with me 1:1. 

When someone tells you the next step in your career is “networking,” something in you tightens. It feels foreign. Transactional. A little inauthentic.

That discomfort is a sign you’ve been handed the wrong definition of networking, and it’s conflicting against your integrity. 

Here are five steps I suggest to my well-meaning introverted clients who want to grow their careers without being schmooze-y.

If you're technically excellent, hold yourself to a high standard, and feel a low hum of guilt about wanting more (because a bigger career might disappoint the people you're currently keeping happy) this one's for you.

In dozens, if not hundreds, of conversations I've had over the years with directors, VPs, and department heads in engineering, finance, construction, and tech, many of them wrestle with the same quiet, corrosive experience: being technically excellent and still somehow invisible in the leadership suite where they're the only woman. Here’s a framework to help you deal with that issue.

Here are the stories of how two of my clients built the connections and relationships that blew the door open to what came next. In the process, they became their own bosses, grew their self-advocacy skills, and made more money than the systems they left ever imagined for them.

When women leave toxic workplaces or step out of roles that chronically undervalue them, it's saying: I will hold the remote to my own career, and I will use it. You have that remote too. The question is, what do you want to do with it?

If you're a woman of color with career ambitions in a male-dominated industry, you intimately know the resource everyone says you're short on: power. But you still govern your own choices, especially when the system is built to make you feel like you don't have any. So how do we put this power into action? I call it the Three Votes Framework. 

Navigating an exit isn't just a corporate transaction—it’s a declaration of your sovereignty. Whether you are planning a major career transition, looking to turn a toxic situation into an opportunity, or preparing to become your own boss, you deserve a space to strategize your exit safely and authentically.

In the C-Suite, you can’t sit back and hope your direct reports have the courage to critique you to your face. You have to lead the narrative.

Don't wait for your team to tell you how you're doing. Tell your team where the organization is going, and invite them to build that future with you.

When people hear “negotiation,” they often picture something adversarial: pounding the table, making threats, trying to “win” at all costs. That’s not how I negotiate, and it’s certainly not how I teach my clients to negotiate.

The women I work with are skilled, thoughtful, and allergic to office politics. They don’t want to turn into jerks to get what they want. They want their income and impact to grow without drama.

That’s where relational negotiation comes in.

Winning in an unequal system simply requires a different, more nuanced kind of effort. If you are a woman or a minority preparing for a pay negotiation, here are three strategic pivots to make.

Are you white-knuckling the status quo — one in which you're underestimated, undervalued, or stifled — while quietly wondering if this is just how it is?

If you're a high-achiever who's genuinely excellent at her job and exhausted by how much that still isn't enough, let me help you do the work to get past that.

No one is coming to crown you. You put the tiara on.

When you bring the locus of control back inside, you’re not denying the reality of bias or structural barriers.

You hold the remote. You choose your next move. You vote—for yourself, with your tribe, and, when needed, with your feet.

That’s what sovereignty looks like in your career.

Women sometimes tell me, “But I don’t know how to negotiate for myself,” as if it’s a fact as obvious as the sky.

I don’t buy that for a second.

As a coach who’s helped women earn over $3 million and counting in additional compensation—the issue is not that women are somehow inherently inferior at negotiation.

The real truth is that we’re operating in systems that penalize us for using negotiation skills, and we’ve been socialized to doubt what we already do brilliantly.