I left my job for the greatest opportunity I saw

I didn't leave my tech job because I wanted to leave my team or the people I worked with behind. I left because I wanted to show up to support people—because that's where I saw the biggest opportunity for transformation in the organizations I worked at.

What is the business case for creating an environment that allows people to feel?

That fosters communication, not only when things are good but especially when things are not.

Behind every UX fail in the technology I use, I see a missed opportunity for conversation—a designer who cares about accessibility who is ignored by the engineers. An engineer who holds a lot of historical knowledge who wasn't consulted by a product person. A manager who wants to keep their star engineer happy at the cost of shared knowledge that ensures continuity. A product team and an engineering org that are in an unresolved stand off.

We have all been there, hesitating at the brink of the helpful truth that we weren't asked for.

I rose up to my capacity to lead in tech after talking to peers about my dreams for culture that engendered generative conflict, and that were intentional about supporting every individual's unique needs and goals, as well the cohesion of the whole team.

People I talked with lit up with me and offered that I needed to lead to bring my visions to life.

When I worked in tech, my leadership and management was driven by my own experiences of feeling small, ignored, under-estimated, quieted.. And the experiences of people, especially those navigating different axes of marginalization that I was privy to through back room chatter and late night conversations after the days' schedule at the offsite ends.

I didn't want to be a successful leader by the metrics the organization laid out. For me, success was about questioning the underlying systems and feedback loops (or lack of them) that kept oppressive patterns well and alive in organizations. It was about using my privileges and position of power to name and challenge dominant power structures in the organization as fearlessly as possible.

I refused to be a culture fit, I became a culture menace instead.

I was serving a greater purpose, one tethered to the dignity of the humans I was serving as leader.

Putting my team first and being the person that calls out the systemic issues led me to have long term relationships and friendships with peers, including those who reported to me in the past.

I learned that power is not inherently bad or malicious, it can be channeled—if the power dynamic can be named and the power can be routed to the collective.

I left because I wanted to serve the people I loved working with. I left to serve from the fullest capacity of my relational and emotional intelligence. I left to create the reality I dreamed of through my career in tech, to offer powerful ways to support individuals who are already leading, even if you don't know it or see it. I left because I needed to return to my creative spark I lost through the years.

While I always knew how to show up for others, I still struggled to show up for myself. In the past five years of running my business, I have practised over and over again, facing the terror that crops up when I realize I don't have a safety net through paid employment.

The further I gave into remembering that I am of the land and that I only need to open myself to be cared for, the more somatic capacity I developed to be present to converse with the threads that lived inside the dread.

Inside I find and meet parts of myself that were told to be giving without ever asking. To make myself small. To be ashamed of what I truly desire. I transmute them through my own adapted somatic and land-based Parts work* practice and I learn what their protective intelligence was doing. I update them and I give them love. I bring more of me back online.

"As they become known to and accepted by us, our feelings and the honest exploration of them become sanctuaries and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas. They become a safe-house for that difference so necessary to change and the conceptualization of any meaningful action."
-Audre Lorde, Poetry is Not a Luxury

Transgressive Adaptation is the meaningful distillation of my living practice of self-retrieval that has opened me to my creative power, a practice that is inherently tied to questioning and dismantling the ways we hold the constrictions of casteist capitalist colonialism in our bodies. This is the framework we'll use to journey together in Create with the world: embrace the power of shaping Change—to tap into the power held within feelings of scarcity, uncertainty, hopelessness or doubt—that currently keep you from the full force of your innate creativity and leadership strengths—so that you can open up into a playful partnership with change and a practice of hope for the future rooted in reciprocal relationship to the land.

Come for the parts of you that bring your emotional intelligence and the relational skills to support people in working together despite how hard things are

Come for the parts of you that were told you weren't senior enough for the job you've already been doing for years

Come for the parts of you that shrank when your boss yelled at you

Come for the parts of you that quiets in zoom calls because you were told you weren't confident enough, assertive enough

Come for the parts of you that are too exhausted to complain anymore about how you are treated so you just do the thing

Come for the parts of you that hang out in the side rooms sharing how that one toxic leader has harmed so many of you and they keep succeeding and getting promoted anyway

Come for the parts of you that brace before every performance review

Come for the parts of you that have felt too sick, too Disabled, too depressed, too Brown, too Black, too neurodivergent, too anxious to succeed at work

Come for the parts that have felt disliked, ignored, put down, shamed, incompetent, unproductive

Come for the parts of you that have tried to fight the power and change the system

Come for these parts that are a menace to people in power, challenging and questioning and pushing and advocating, for yourself and your people

Come for the parts of you that are hiding, bubbling with play and joy and creativity under the surface, masking with doubts about whether you are creative enough...

Leave with a loving appreciation of the hidden gifts of your inner ecology.

With more of your creative energy online.

With more trust in your body.

It is my honor to hold space with you, and to serve your powerful creative and leadership strengths.

*Parts work is a non-pathologizing psychological healing framework that comes from the Internal Family Systems model developed by Richard. C. Schwartz, that I learned as adapted by teachers Sarah-Jawaid and Damon-Azali Rojas' through their Liberatory Coaching workshop and their book, Love Letter to the Movement: A coach approach for healing, justice and liberation. I further adapted it through my own practice.

*Transgressive Adaptation is the transformative framework that I birthed in the lineage of Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower and adrienne maree brown's Emergent Strategy, with Black feminist worldbuilding guidance and support from Ayana Zaire Cotton at Seeda School.