At Intel and Oracle, I saw that firsthand. Decades after the founders, teams were still wrestling with the unresolved patterns left behind: how power was used, how conflict was avoided, how decisions were made. These cultural codes shaped everything from product innovation to employee morale.
WHY I COACH
The founders' imprint lasts for generations.
Coaching opened a path to solve a problem I couldn’t unsee: founders and CEOs shape not only culture but the systems that determine how companies grow, lead, and last. Their influence reaches far beyond their tenure—how they communicate, decide, and develop others becomes the pattern that endures long after the original founder has moved on.
My Path to Coaching
My first executive coach was a retired CEO of a large hospital chain. We’re still in touch. He used to say his job was to help me avoid “getting lumps on my head.” He had collected plenty of those lumps over his career, and his mission was to pass on the lessons so others didn’t have to earn them the hard way.
My second coach, who I’m also still in touch with, was part of a coaching brain trust. She’s Welsh. Her phrasing alone could stop a room. But what stayed with me most was how she made the complex look simple. She helped me “see corners sharper,” as she put it, and taught me the art of conversations: of possibility, power, and balance.
Engineering the Human System
I left graduate school with two engineering degrees focused on how organizations function,how management systems are designed, measured, and sustained, and how human factors shape the way teams work. From the pixel on a screen to the muscle using a mouse to why a team of six often outperforms two teams of three, I learned to look at design at every level.
Working in Silicon Valley taught me something else: the way a start-up is designed, its systems, leadership habits, and early decisions, becomes its cultural DNA.
Every organization inherits the fingerprints of its founders.
Why I Coach
In 2008, I made a decision. I would work with founders and leadership teams to raise awareness of their impact, not just on quarterly results, but on the generations who would inherit their companies.
Today, I help leaders and organizations expand their capacity to lead through possibility, power, and potential.
The goal isn’t to erase quirks or rewrite history; it’s to choose, deliberately, which traits will define the culture and the legacy they leave behind.