_edited.png)
Part deep thinker,
part playful guide.
About Me
People are sometimes surprised by the combination. The deep thinking part they expect—more than twenty years in higher education, the graduate degrees, the original frameworks. The playful part catches them off guard. But both are real, and both show up in every room I enter. I'm an introvert who genuinely loves people. I'm as comfortable on a wilderness trail as I am in a boardroom. I hike with a zirconium hip, and while that sets some limits for me, I go anyway because limits and longing are not opposites. And I believe that the work of finding your way through this life is serious enough to deserve both rigor and laughter.
Why Wild Wayfinding
Two quotes have haunted me, in the best possible way, for longer than I can remember.
The first is Mary Oliver's poetic question: "What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" The second is Frederick Buechner's description of vocation: "The place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."
I have never been able to put either of them down.
For years I did two things I loved. I coached people, sitting with them in the interior work of figuring out what matters and what to do next. And I walked, alone and with others, in the mountains and along the coast of Southern California and through neighborhoods at dusk. I found things on foot I couldn't find at a desk.
Then I wrote Walking & Wayfinding, and the walking found its voice. On the page it became clear that walking, writing, and mindful practice are a calling of their own. So I'm letting that lead.
Walking and writing are my primary vocation now. Coaching remains a large part of my professional life but I'm winding down my private practice and keeping the contract coaching I love. This gives the walking-and-writing life the room to grow. Naming that was a recognition that following my path meant some more changes along the way.
That is what wayfinding has always meant to me, paying attention, step after step.
What I believe
Courage is at the center for me. It's the value I return to no matter where I start. It's the one that won't let me organize my thinking, or my living, any other way.
There's a distinction worth naming: bravery is acting without fear; courage is acting even with it, or in spite of it. That distinction shapes everything about how I work and why.
Without courage, authenticity stays private and integrity stays as intention. For me, courage leads me to actions that can build trust and belonging.
My core values are authenticity, courage, and integrity. The place where these three meet is where I try to live.
What shaped me
More than twenty years in higher education gave me a formation I couldn't have planned and wouldn't trade in how people find their way toward each other across genuine difference, and what it actually takes to build something together in conditions that are rarely ideal.
Another education was always happening alongside it, more tangible, more solitary, learned through the hands and the body. I am a musician, a gardener, a photographer, and a walker. Each practice keeps teaching me something different, but underneath all of them is the same invitation: to stay curious, to wonder, to remain open.
The writers and thinkers who have shaped my thinking include Mary Oliver, Frederick Buechner, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Ross Gay, whose work on finding delight continues to inform how I understand joy as something we practice, not something we wait for.
Wild Wayfinding came after years of deep coaching work, miles and miles on the trail, and a long season of reflection.
By the numbers
420+ clients. 1,700+ hours of individual coaching conversations. Contracts with BetterUp and Spring Health. Clients in 22 countries across six continents.
I am a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with the International Coaching Federation and a National Board-Certified Health and Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC). I hold the Erickson Solution-Focused Coach Diploma. I hold a Master of Arts in Music from the University of California, Riverside, and a Master of Divinity from Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley.
I am the author of the Amazon #1 bestseller in Walking, Walking & Wayfinding: Create Your Own Mindful Practice, One Step at a Time, available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook. I am a contributing author to Confident You: The Raw Conversations: Real Stories of Courage, Healing, and Redefining Confidence, an Amazon International #1 Bestseller in Women Authors.
Early in my career I received the "Quietly Making Noise Award," given in recognition of behind-the-scenes work that no one sees and yet everyone notices.
Giving back
Currently I commit a portion of my professional hours to pro bono coaching through Up with Women / Exponenti'elles, supporting recently homeless and at-risk women and gender-diverse individuals building a sustainable path out of poverty in Canada.
This work is not separate from Wild Wayfinding. It is what my values ask of me.
Hear from me
Chapter 1 of Walking & Wayfinding begins where most things worth doing begin: with a question about why. Why wayfinding? Where does the word come from, and what does it have to teach us about moving through uncertainty with intention? Press play for a brief excerpt, and a sense of what the practice sounds and feels like from the inside.