Leadership for Me Began Behind a Pharmacy Counter

Early in her career, my daughter told me she didn’t want to be a leader. Not that she couldn’t be a leader—she just didn’t want to.

She had her reasons. She watched the people above her closely, the way you do when you’re new and paying attention. She saw how overwhelmed they were. How unhappy they seemed, and at times distant, even lonely. And somewhere along the way, they had become people they probably hadn’t set out to be.

I wanted to argue with her, but I had spent thirty years in those leadership rooms. I had seen exactly what she was describing, and on some days I had been the type of leader she was describing.

Our conversation stayed with me. If leadership looked like that to a smart, capable young woman deciding what to do with her life, then something was wrong with how we were identifying, growing, and supporting our business leaders. We needed change.

More than ever, we need diverse, supported, purposeful, bold leaders who are not diminished by the work, and who make the people around them larger.

Around the same time as the conversation with my daughter, I began working with an executive coach, Mary Pat Knight. I went in expecting to sharpen my strategy and tactics. She turned my attention in a different direction.

She asked what made me the most proud. I started to talk about the companies we’d built and sold. Then I stopped, because it wasn’t the whole truth. What I was proudest of was the people. The ones I’d hired and watched become CEOs, founders, and chiefs of their own organizations. It was obvious to my coach that I had been growing a leadership tree without fully seeing it.

And yet, it was right there in front of me. When I was promoted to my first leadership role, my father gave me a portfolio with an inscription: “What I see depends mainly on what I look for.” It took a coach, three decades later, to show me what I had been looking for all along: the possibility in a person. I see their potential before they can see it themselves, and I can help them unlock it.

It was time to fully dedicate myself to this work.

At first, I focused on women leaders. Before I had an advisory practice, I had a question: Why were so few of the people who deliver care, and receive it, sitting in the rooms where the decisions were made? To find the answer, I interviewed more than three dozen women leaders in healthcare. What they said shaped what came next for me. Women reaching for, and achieving, the highest levels of leadership remain at the center of my work today.

The leaders I’m drawn to, and who are drawn to me, share something regardless of gender, industry, or title. I call them humanistic leaders. They are keenly aware of the people and the environment around them. They own their leadership journey rather than wait for someone to map it for them. They possess a growth mindset, which means they’re comfortable being a work in progress. And they accept that leadership begins from within.

I work deeply with a small number of clients at a time. CEOs, presidents, executive directors, and the senior leaders around them, in healthcare, technology, financial services, law, and beyond. I work at three levels at once, because that’s how leadership happens: the individual leader, within the team, and as part of the organization.

I teach in distinctions. Doing versus Being. Expectations versus Agreements. Rescuing versus Developing. A good distinction is a small hinge that swings a large door; once you can see the difference, you can’t unsee it, and you begin to lead differently without being told to.

I also teach through stories, because that’s how leaders learn. Not from frameworks but from watching someone like themselves face a moment they recognize. Each week I write one such story in Tiny Leadership Stories, a three-minute read centering around a single distinction.

And I make everything I have available to the people I work with. The Fireside is where you can find every tool, workbook, and framework I’ve built over thirty years of leading and coaching. Nothing is held back.

I ask more than I tell. If you want someone to hand you the answer, I’m probably not your coach. If you want someone who will help you find the answer you already carry, and then hold you to it, we should talk.

Healthcare taught me first principles. Healing. Growth. Caring for others. Those principles don’t stop at the hospital door. Executive decisions in every industry ripple outward to touch real people: our teams, our customers, our communities. The leaders we need now are the ones who can hold business acumen and human understanding in the same hand, giving each their due.

My daughter was right about what she saw. But she learned leadership does not have to be that way. Proving that, one leader at a time, is my work.