As a result of executive coaching with me, Black leaders, visionaries, creatives and game changers experience greater energy, show up more authentically, blow the lights out of their results, and take great care of themselves. I help high achievers break barriers by creating sustainable work/life balance that centers their health, unleashes their gifts, and transforms their spirituality into a Force for good. 

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How I approach my work

The International Coaching Federation defines coaching as "partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential." In this way, coaching offers clients meaningful tools and a powerful relationship within which to become their best self, conceive an inspiring vision, and lead in empowering ways.

But though traditional executive coaching can create impressive results, its methods don’t address Black people’s holistic needs. Coaches who lack cultural competence can unknowingly inflict tremendous harm upon Black human beings. Indeed, most Black women and men need both race-specific support and psychological safety traditional coaching does not offer. Precious few coaches have developed the self awareness to work across racial/cultural difference, understand how racialized dynamics often play out in the workplace, have somatically conditioned their body to withstand racialized stress, and possess the cultural awareness and humility to effectively coach Black human beings.  

For instance, mainstream techniques do not address:

  • the stress, burnout, invisibility, marginalization or exclusion Black leaders often experience in predominately White spaces;

  • physical, emotional and spiritual exhaustion caused by overwork, expectations you’ll be twice as good, racial aggression (macro and micro) and anti-Blackness;

  • the ways 360-degree feedback and performance reviews can unintentionally convey racial micro-aggressions and perpetuate anti-Blackness and misogynoir;

  • heartbreak, frustration and anger from being over-supervised, or having your tone, affect or work product questioned, devalued, undermined or even policed;

  • the lack of mentors, sponsors and unbiased high-quality performance reviews or 360 feedback;

  • racial complexities of organizational politics for Black people in workplaces historically created for college-educated White men;

  • coworkers and supervisors who want Black men and women to either be more (or less) authentic, less (or more) “aggressive” and or to take up less (or more) space;

  • inconsistent, untrustworthy or nonexistent allyship;

  • loneliness, isolation and or spiritual disconnection;

  • self-doubt, anxiety, depression and or imposter syndrome;

  • traumas Black women and men experience both inside and outside the office.    

That’s a long list of topics for an executive coach to be unable to support you on when you’re trying to excel at work, increase your income, advance your career and follow your dreams.

When executive coaches focus solely on Black people’s professional performance but don’t tend to our spiritual, mental and emotional wellbeing, that lack of support can cause us to lose trust, and feel isolated and even unsafe. Because our core issues go unaddressed, we risk running on adrenaline, cortisol and other stress hormones that help energize us to handle our work/life demands but that can also cause undesirable mental and physical health outcomes, including chronic diseases.

What’s more, in today's post-George Floyd world, many organizations expect Black executives to help lead DEIB efforts, as companies seek to navigate demographic change, rectify some wrongs and increase employees’ sense of belonging. While Black professionals often welcome these efforts and the vote of confidence, this highly emotional labor -- often unpaid and or under-resourced -- can amplify stress and take a silent toll upon our souls. Black women and men need psychologically safe spaces where we are understood, appreciated, championed, take off our armor, discharge racial stress and anxiety, reflect on our personal and professional experiences and process how prejudice and discrimination impact us. Indeed, many Black and Brown change makers are no longer willing to sacrifice our health and wellness upon the altar of traditional "success". Indeed, delivering amazing and sustainable results requires centering our wellbeing. We want a thought partner who can help us be our best and to be coached not merely to survive systems that don't work well for us (or many other human beings), but instead to deploy our gifts and talents to create groundbreaking innovations and breakthrough performance and results that shape a more humane, equitable and sustainable world.  

Here’s how I help

Drawing upon 13 years of experience in Corporate life, writing partnerships with some of society’s leading game-changers, my extensive research on Black life and wellbeing, as well as my coaching skills, I executive coach using an integrated approach that liberates you from identities, skill sets and survival strategies that no longer serve you, freeing you to thrive and innovate more easily in all areas of life. Together, we co-create an empowering relationship that helps unleash untapped resources within, allowing you to envision possibilities and accomplish outcomes the old version of you could not imagine or access. You achieve more by being more rather than by doing more (read: instead of by overworking, overriding mental and physical warning signs, running yourself ragged and or adding more tasks to an already unachievable To Do list.)   

My approach includes but is not limited to the traditional skill sets of an ICF-certified professional coach. I also employ skills as an Energy Leadership Coach (™), Energy Leadership Index (™) Master Practitioner and an Embodied Coach (™) to assess how you deploy your energy under normal conditions and under stress, and to help you create superior results by deploying your energy differently. Importantly, I’m trained as a Somatic Abolitionist, meaning I use an embodied anti-racist practice and culture-building approach that honors the age-old wisdom of the human body, and tempers and conditions your mind, body and soul to hold, process and metabolize the energetic charge of race, racism and White body supremacy — the belief that the White body is the standard by which all other bodies are measured, structurally and philosophically, and every body that isn’t White is deficient. I support you to:

  • identify and leverage your personal and professional strengths, as well as the mindsets that have helped you execute at such a high level;

  • take stock of your skill sets, successes and positive results you’ve created in your personal and professional lives, as well as the challenges and difficulties you’re currently experiencing;

  • plan, strategize, trouble-shoot, and thought partner in a psychologically safe environment;

  • engage in the personal development that underlies professional success, including healing racial trauma, developing your emotional intelligence, and building relationships;

  • reduce stress and take care of your health to prime yourself for high performance;

  • navigate systemic, structural, institutional and interpersonal racism and White body supremacy;

  • develop as a whole human being — spiritually, mentally, physically, and emotionally;

  • align your actions with your personal and professional values;

  • employ the new brain science of with high achievement;

  • increase your emotional intelligence and improve relationships;

  • release pain and energy blocks caused by personal and professional traumas;

  • experience more freedom, joy and creativity;

  • move beyond surviving to thriving.

The connection between executive coaching and writing

I also bring to the coaching moment 20+ years of experience as a journalist expert in Black health and wellbeing — including as an author of two NAACP Image Award-winning books: “Health First! The Black Woman’s Wellness Guide” and “Promises Kept: Raising Black Boys to Succeed in School and in Life”. (Sometimes the way to create a breakthrough at work is to schedule that long-overdue mammogram/prostate exam you’ve been worrying about or to give constructive feedback to your son’s teacher.)

What’s the relationship between these two seemingly different kinds of work?

For one, the powerful impact the pathfinders, cultural icons and way-makers I work with — from tennis’s Williams Sisters, to Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance, to NASA mathematician Mrs. Katherine Johnson, to Afro Sheen’s founder, George E. Johnson — have upon humanity. And book collaborating requires many of the same skills essential to executive coaching: deep listening, nonjudgment, increasing self-awareness, planning and goal setting, inspiring movement from thinking to action, developing persuasive and motivating messages, clearing emotional blocks, increasing authenticity, overcoming fear, and finding their voice. As a result of listening to so many narratives, I can intuit the arc of a person's story. I also sense when to turn the page, wrap up a chapter, and even close the book.

 

My profession experience

Prior to entering publishing, I experienced 13 years of increasingly responsible sales, marketing and management experience with Fortune 100 companies. I managed people and business, and helped lead new-product launches, product- and quality-improvement initiatives, and DEIB efforts. During the late 1990s, when book and magazine publishing began diversifying, I took a leap of faith and followed my childhood dreams and became a writer and editor.