When you’re the steady one for everyone else, but not for yourself
I work with senior tech leaders with fast minds and full plates who are tired of flying in survival mode on the inside. Together, we cultivate an inner world that is strong and steady, so you can handle the outside world with more ease, less stress, and feel back in control of what you can actually control.
A bit more about my background
- Former Microsoft leader with responsibility for a £22M enterprise cloud services portfolio, leading a 100‑strong team across high‑stakes, cross‑functional, cross‑country projects
- Enterprise Global Service Delivery Lead for a major retail client, coordinating teams across 17 countries and speaking at Microsoft’s global annual services event in Seattle on cloud adoption and large‑scale change
- Prosci®‑certified change management practitioner recognised for leading complex customer change journeys and service delivery improvements
- Led hiring and early‑in‑career talent (interns, apprentices, graduates) and mentored across the services division, including career advisory board preparation and progression support
- Multi‑neurodivergent learner with lived experience of masking, burnout, and rebuilding a self‑led life
- Trained in self‑leadership, mental fitness (Positive Intelligence®), 3 Brains Intelligence®, and multiple coaching modalities grounded in psychology, biology, neuroscience, and naturopathic nutrition
- Ongoing personal development since working with my first coach in 2003
- Guest speaker for universities, radio, and tech companies on self‑leadership and mental fitness
Why this work is personal
I did not come to this work from a textbook. I came to it from the inside of high‑pressure tech.
In my corporate days at Microsoft I was surrounded by smart, driven people in fast‑moving, high‑stakes environments. Like many big tech cultures, there was relentless pace, constant change, and a lot of pressure to perform. I watched brilliant people slowly lose themselves in that pressure. On the outside they looked composed. On the inside they were second‑guessing, over‑adapting, and quietly doubting if they could really be who they are and still belong.
I know that experience from the inside too. As a multi‑neurodivergent human, I learned early to mask, over‑effort, and prove myself. Some things that looked “easy” for others were hard for me, and some “hard” things felt strangely natural. I hid my diagnosis because it did not feel safe to share it. I internalised the pressure, drove myself harder, and measured my worth by how well I kept it together.
On paper, I was successful. Inside, I was overloaded, reactive, and mentally chaotic.
At one stage, as part of a company health and wellbeing initiative, I was invited to wear a Firstbeat monitor for a few days to track my stress, sleep, and recovery. Firstbeat uses heart rate variability (HRV) to show when your body is under strain and when it is truly restoring itself. My results came back as a sea of red. Even when I was “resting”, my system was not recovering. I was clearly on a path to burnout, even though on the outside I was still performing and holding it all together.
That data simply confirmed what I already felt but was overriding. It was a hard piece of proof that the way I was living and leading was not sustainable.
What I’ve learned:
You cannot out‑perform a life that is quietly running on self‑pressure.
Most leadership strain is not caused by events.
It’s caused by unexamined mental reactions to them.
Always learning, because I know I do not know it all
I have a voracious desire to understand myself, other people, and how life works. That curiosity has taken me into psychology, biology, neuroscience, coaching, and mental fitness – not to collect badges, but because I am acutely aware of how much I do not know.
My first coach, back in 2003, was a turning point. I had never heard of coaching; a colleague simply said it had helped her. For the first time, I had someone helping me make sense of what was going on in my mind and how I related to myself and others. With her support my confidence and self‑belief grew. I started advocating for myself, and even doubled my salary by putting myself forward in ways I would previously have shied away from. It taught me how powerful it is to have someone in your corner.
Prosci® change management training was another spark. It excited me so much that I wanted to become a change manager, but there were no roles at the time. Instead, I integrated that work into my global delivery role, leading a 700‑person migration to new cloud systems across 17 countries. That journey earned awards, a speaking slot at Microsoft’s global annual services event in Seattle, and interviews on our company portal – and, more importantly, it showed me how much I cared about helping humans navigate change, not just technology.
Working with Michael Bungay Stanier on becoming more coach‑like as a leader deepened that. His “coaching habit” approach showed me new ways of relating to others that were deeply empowering and enabling – more “teach a person to fish” than “give them a fish.” It confirmed that the way I wanted to work was through questions, partnership, and shared ownership.
The burnouts along the way taught me about foundations. Without health and energy, nothing else is possible or matters. A lot of my passion now is helping clients step out of self‑neglect and people‑pleasing and into taking radically better care of their “human,” so they have the capacity to live and lead the way they actually want to.
Over the years I have tried many different approaches and modalities. They all taught me something, but I often wished there was a simpler way to bring it all together. That is why I value Positive Intelligence® so highly. It synthesises four core disciplines and decades of research into a mental fitness framework that does a lot of the heavy lifting. I wish I had had that foundation back in 2003.
Learning to navigate the unknown
In my 20s, I moved to Japan. New country, new language, new culture, no familiar faces; a world I did not yet understand.
Japan was a massive eye‑opener. It showed me how many different lives are being lived in ways I had never imagined. It also uncovered strengths I did not know I had, because the environment invited me to be braver, more curious, and more flexible than ever before. I had to expand my awareness, adapt, and learn how to stay grounded and trust that I could figure things out as things unfolded in an environment that did not automatically make sense.
Later, at Microsoft, that same capacity showed up in a different way: leading customer CODE REDs for major retail clients. When systems failed, millions were at stake, and emotions were running high, my job was not just to stay calm. It was to get the issue to resolution fast and steady the room along the way.
In those moments I was managing across three layers at once:
- Myself – steadying my own mind under pressure
- The situation – cutting through noise and focusing on facts
- Others – calming emotion and aligning action
I learned that real composure is not pretending you are not affected. It is knowing which layer to steady first, and that always starts inside.
What I’ve learned about composure under pressure:
Steadiness is not what you do in a CODE RED. It is who you have trained yourself to be when life tilts.
When the world is unfamiliar, the brain predicts more and senses less.
That is why uncertainty feels destabilising, and why inner steadiness matters first.
What I believe about self‑leadership and mental fitness
There is the pressure of life and work. And there is the pressure you put on yourself.
Most of the leaders I work with are not just weighed down by external demands. They are living under a constant hum of internal pressure: harsh self‑talk, old stories about what they “should” be, and default patterns that keep them spinning instead of feeling in control.
To me, self‑leadership is your ability to influence your own thoughts, behaviours, and actions so you can live and lead in line with what matters to you. It rests on three core skills:
- Self‑awareness – seeing what is happening inside instead of being it
- Self‑regulation – steadying yourself under pressure
- Self‑direction – choosing responses instead of reacting on autopilot
Awareness is the meta‑skill. Self‑leadership is the skill set we practise from there.
Mental fitness is the operating system underneath it all. It underpins how you perform, how you connect, and how fulfilled you feel. Without it, you can end up in survival autopilot: reactive, overloaded, externally successful but internally off‑kilter. With it, you reclaim agency. You stop handing your power to old patterns and start leading yourself with more choice and intention.
By cultivating an internal world that is strong and steady, you can handle the outside world with greater ease, more flow, and far less stress – and feel back in control of what you can truly control.
What I’ve learned about self‑leadership:
Your mind will fly wherever you point it. Self‑leadership is deciding who does the pointing: autopilot or you.
How I work with you
I work 1 to 1 with senior tech leaders who are ready to stop flying on survival autopilot and start Piloting Their Mind with intention.
My work weaves together:
- Self‑leadership coaching – building self‑awareness, self‑regulation, and self‑direction so you can stop abandoning yourself and start standing with yourself
- Mental fitness (Positive Intelligence®) – a science‑backed system that blends neuroscience, positive psychology, performance science, and cognitive‑behavioural work into simple daily practices
- 3 Brains Intelligence® – helping you listen to the head, heart, and gut so your choices feel clearer, more grounded, and more aligned
We do not just talk about insight. We build habits and inner steadiness you can lean on in the moments that matter: the code reds, the hard conversations, the days your mind feels full with nothing left to give.
Clients often describe this work as a revelation – they feel less mentally pulled and pressured, calmer and clearer, with more energy and a stronger sense of control. As they understand how their mind works, they think better, do better, and people around them notice the difference.
Your next step
If something in my story or philosophy resonates, you are welcome to start where you feel most comfortable. Most leaders who work with me begin with Pilot Your Mind, my 6‑month mental fitness and self‑leadership journey, and some prefer to start smaller and build from there.
You can:
- Explore Pilot Your Mind and other ways to work with me – see my coaching offers and the Signal Check Assessment
- Start small – get the free Back in Control Starter Kit and begin steadying your mind in under 10 minutes a day
- Talk first – book a free 30‑minute Signal Check Call and we will work out together what makes sense for you now
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- Explore Pilot Your Mind and other ways to work with me → Here
- Get the Back in Control Starter Kit → opt‑in form here
