My Coaching Background

Throughout my life, family, friends, and colleagues have called on me to help them solve problems, make changes (big and small), and think differently about their futures. These were sometimes one-off conversations, but more often they became an ongoing dialogue between the other person and me that we’d share and build over days, weeks, months, and even years.

 

Realizing how much I’ve enjoyed those conversations–and how much people told me they got out of them–a few years ago I decided to devote more of my professional and consulting life to coaching. In early 2022 I began a training program to learn best practices and begin to build a network of fellow coaches. I completed that program in late 2022 (and earned my ACC credential from the International Coaching Federation in 2023), and since then have grown my individual coaching practice with a sense of intentionality–I know I’m not the coach for everyone and not everyone is the client for me.  

 

Today, my job as a coach is to create a safe space for you to talk through your goals and challenges, and to dream big. I approach each engagement with humility and no judgment–I make sure my clients know that with me there is no penalty for saying what’s on their mind. 

 

In this way, I help my clients express their desires, tap into their wisdom, and make a plan that aligns their actions with their values and what they actually want.

 

In short, coaching can help you get out of your own way and move forward toward what you really want.

 

More about me

I’ve certainly learned new skills through my coaching coursework. But I trace my innate strengths as a coach to growing up LGBTQ in somewhat rural Pennsylvania in the 1980s and 1990s. I learned to observe and listen during those years, because it was often dangerous to be too visible. Although today I am fully out and proud, I still tend to listen more than speak, and I’ve strengthened my powers of observation and presence through 20 years of meditation and other mindfulness practices.

 

Being LGBTQ has also allowed me to develop and cultivate a keen sense of empathy for people, especially those who find themselves at the margins in some way. I don’t claim to understand every person’s experience (e.g., as a white man I can't know what a Black woman experiences in America), but I do know what it means to feel invisible—or worse—and can use that empathy to forge authentic connections and establish trust and safety with my coaching clients.