Leadership Coach, Executive Coach, and Keynote Speaker with thirty-five years of real executive experience across government, nonprofits, and industry.
Five years ago, my Tuesday afternoons looked like this: managing COVID response across Manitoba, building programs to keep businesses alive, and working to ensure my team of 800 had the autonomy and authority to do work that mattered. Every decision carried weight. Every mistake had consequences for real people.
Today, my Tuesday afternoons look different. I might be sharpening a keynote, sitting across from a coaching client asking the question nobody else will ask them, or exploring new partnerships where we can make an impact.
I spent more than thirty-five years inside rooms where decisions were not theoretical. Public service, association management, innovation ecosystems, biotech and pharma. I have led teams through growth, through conflict, through a global pandemic. I have hired people who changed everything and fired people when it was the hardest conversation I have ever had to have.
I have also gotten it wrong. More than once. I avoided hard conversations when I should have had them. I mistook my title for authority when the two are not the same thing. I let data do the talking when what people actually needed was a story.
There are a lot of people holding themselves out as leadership and culture experts right now. Some of them have sat on boards. Some have managed small teams inside bigger organizations. Some have read the books and done the research.
I have done that and more.
My first real leadership role came at 41. I was hired to lead a team of three, four including me, and told there was no HR issue on file. Within three months, I had to fire someone anyway, for reasons that predated me. No paper trail. No HR department to call. Just me, a four-person team, and a decision nobody else was going to make.
And I have also sat in the chair. The one where you are responsible for hundreds of people, where the decisions can’t wait for you to feel ready, and where getting it wrong isn’t a learning opportunity, it’s an impact on real people.
When I am standing on a stage or sitting across from a client, I am not reciting what I have studied. I have felt the feelings you are going to feel when you hear me talk. That is not something you get from reading a book. It is something you earn by doing the work, making the mistakes, and being honest about both.
Thirty-five years spent in the rooms where the decisions were real: two decades in pharmaceutical, a decade running an industry association, a provincial government through the pandemic, and now my own practice. I have led teams of four and teams of eight hundred, and made the hard call in every one of them.
Twenty years in pharmaceutical, rising through roles focused on healthcare policy and drug coverage.
Ten years leading Manitoba’s biosciences industry association.
Started as one department - completed the restructure and managed both.
The province’s senior executive for economic strategy through the pandemic.
Developed and launched the Premier’s Economic Development Board.
Drove the province’s surgical and diagnostic recovery.
Keynote speaker, coach, and workshop facilitator, working from what leadership actually taught me.
The training gave me the framework, and thirty years of real leadership gave me everything else.
Coach training completed through Destination Leadership, an ICF-aligned program
Certified Facilitator for Workplace Coaching Training
ICF credentialing in progress
Pick the path that's right for you.
