I started working in my father’s restaurant when I was 10. By my early 20s, I was running one. I was terrified of messing up payroll, and somehow I was also the person my staff trusted with their problems. That’s where I first saw it: trust, clear expectations, and true alignment weren’t abstract ideas. They looked like jamming out to the Beastie Boys with the kitchen crew to pump up the team before a huge Saturday crowd of hungry, competitive athletes came in. They looked like helping a cook make their mother’s favorite soup before her visit, because they wanted to show her what they’d learned and how much they cared. Teams like that didn’t just feel better to work in. They performed better. I didn’t have language for it yet, but I was already doing leadership development.

From there, my path took some turns. I moved into corporate training in the tech industry, then stepped back to raise a family and spent the next 18 years teaching, preschool through adult learners, including years as a classroom teacher and a school-wide literacy specialist. Eventually I found myself designing and leading professional development across 33 schools, reaching over 20,000 students. That work taught me how to build something that actually holds up at scale. Then an old friend asked if I’d help facilitate and build content for her consulting firm, and that’s how I found my way into leadership development for good.

If you’re picturing a tidy career plan, there wasn’t one. What connects all of it is simpler: I’ve spent my life paying attention to how people grow, whether they’re seven or seventy, working a shift or leading a company.

From 2022 to 2025, I brought that same eye for people into organizational development and leadership consulting at a national consulting firm, building leadership programs from the ground up. I integrated emotional intelligence with core leadership competencies, used Hogan, PDP/ProScan, DiSC, MBTI, and CliftonStrengths to help leaders understand their own strengths and blind spots, and became the person teams called when there was a “simmering” conflict quietly eroding trust.

In 2025, I founded Owl Canyon Consulting to bring this work directly to leaders and organizations who want it, from construction and healthcare to growing local businesses. I’ve built and led full leadership development cohorts, facilitated live rooms including a recent fireside chat for the Media + Tech Collective in Denver, and I’m currently working toward my ICF certification, because I believe a coach should keep doing the same growth work she asks of her clients.