Stories, essays, and the truth about everyday leadership.
This is where I sort through the truth of it all with a little grace and a lot of humor in leadership, in technology, and in life. Sometimes that looks like a short essay on presence. Sometimes it’s a glimpse into my books-in-progress. Sometimes it’s just me sharing what it took today to keep moving forward.
I don’t write on a schedule; I write when there’s something worth saying. Sign up below to read the latest, or start with a few favorites below.
Essays on Presence — Reflections on clarity, boundaries, and showing up fully — even when the world is loud.
Book Updates — Behind-the-scenes notes on my memoir and nonfiction work. Drafting, revising, celebrating, and sometimes wrestling with words.
Personal Reflections — Stories and snapshots from everyday life — coffee on the deck, scary movies, bourbon nights. The moments that remind me why presence matters.
We Were Never Meant to Lead Like This
In a world that prizes hustle, high visibility, and polished power-moves, staying still feels countercultural. Yet the truth I keep discovering as a leader, technologist, and human is this: the most potent work happens in the quiet spaces between doing and being.
In this piece, I walk through what it means to step off the performance treadmill, lean into the edges of our strengths (yes — even the ones with shadows), and listen instead of always speaking. It’s a reflection on grit and grace, on alignment more than achievement, and on trusting the voice inside you that doesn’t demand applause—it simply waits.
If you’re tired of leading from the stage and ready to lead from the room, this post is for you. Bring your questions, your contradictions, and your curiosity. Let’s sit with them together.
It is easy to forget how recently in our history women have been allowed to lead at all. A century ago, most women could not sign a mortgage, manage a bank account, or walk into a boardroom without an escort. Today, women hold roughly 32 percent of executive roles in the United States, according to McKinsey’s 2024 Women in the Workplace report. That is progress, yes, but it is also proof that most of us are still newcomers in rooms built by and for someone else.
We are often the minority at the table.
We know it.
They know it.
And we learn to perform accordingly.
From an early age, girls are taught to read a room before they ever learn to trust their own voice. We are rewarded for making people comfortable, praised for being adaptable, and quietly punished when we are not. By the time many women arrive in leadership, performance has become muscle memory. We have learned how to be palatable, how to manage perception, how to hold authority without appearing “too much.”
“We inherited a leadership script written for someone else, and the cracks are showing.”
As a woman who has spent her career in senior leadership, I have watched brilliant women fracture themselves trying to fit inside systems that were never designed for them. They perform strength in cultures that reward stoicism. They soften their truths to stay likable. They translate empathy into data just to be heard.
It is exhausting.
And it is unsustainable.
We inherited the wrong script. One that equates leadership with control, authority with volume, and composure with worth. A script that says feelings are liabilities and intuition belongs at home, not in the boardroom.
But the cracks are widening, and light is getting through.
In a world that prizes hustle, high visibility, and polished power-moves, staying still feels countercultural. Yet the truth I keep discovering as a leader, technologist, and human is this: the most potent work happens in the quiet spaces between doing and being.
In this piece, I walk through what it means to step off the performance treadmill, lean into the edges of our strengths (yes — even the ones with shadows), and listen instead of always speaking. It’s a reflection on grit and grace, on alignment more than achievement, and on trusting the voice inside you that doesn’t demand applause—it simply waits.
If you’re tired of leading from the stage and ready to lead from the room, this post is for you. Bring your questions, your contradictions, and your curiosity. Let’s sit with them together.