I’ve spent nearly 30 years in nonprofit and community-driven work — more than a decade of that in executive leadership. I built HomeGrown Strategies for the leaders I worked alongside, who deserved more than a one-day workshop or executive theory.
I’ve also been the one in the meeting trying to make sense of conflicting board priorities. The one figuring out how to deliver on what was promised when the funding came in lower than planned. The one carrying a team through a reorg while still keeping the work moving. The one trying to grow as a leader while everyone around me assumed I already had it figured out.
That experience — both the executive view and the everything-underneath-it view — is what shapes how I work now.
When I started coaching and facilitating leadership development across the sector, the same thing kept coming up. Leaders in the middle would tell me, in slightly different words every time:
“The training I get is either too basic or too executive. Nothing fits the job I actually do.”
They were right. Most leadership programs skip the middle — the seat where the actual work happens. The seat between strategy and execution. The seat carrying more responsibility than formal authority. The seat where so many high-potential nonprofit leaders quietly burn out, plateau, or leave the sector altogether.
Confidare is what I built to fix that. A 9-month cohort designed around the six leadership domains that actually shape how mid-level leaders show up — and built to meet leaders where they are, not where someone else thinks they should be.
I don’t do leadership theater. I don’t recycle frameworks I’ve never used. And I don’t pretend that leadership development is separate from the rest of the realities you’re navigating — limited resources, complex stakeholders, mission pressure, real people with real lives.
When I work with leaders or organizations, I bring three things:
I hold an MSW, an MBA, and am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. I’m certified in diversity coaching, positive psychology-based coaching, and emergent learning.
As a coach, facilitator, and consultant, I’ve partnered with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, StriveTogether, Lutheran Services in America, Future Farmers of America, and hundreds of individual leaders across the nonprofit sector.
I work with organizations that exist to serve their communities. That's not a tagline — it's the reason I'm in this business. My job is to make sure leadership development serves the mission, not the other way around.
Leadership development that ignores power and access isn't real leadership development. I pay attention to who's in the room, who isn't, and how decisions land differently depending on where someone sits.
I do what I say I'll do. I expect the same in return. The work doesn't get done by good intentions — it gets done by people who hold themselves and each other to what was promised.
The strongest work I've done has been with leaders willing to challenge me, push back, and bring their full thinking to the table. Real partnership requires real honesty.
What gets said in coaching stays in coaching. What gets discussed in a private cohort stays there. Trust is the foundation of everything else, and I treat it that way.
The Confidare Leadership Cohort is the most direct way to keep going — a 9-month structured path built around six leadership domains, grounded in real practice with peers who get your seat.
If you want a baseline on your six leadership domains before deciding, the Confidare Leadership Skills Self-Assessment is a 10-minute optional starting point.
The fastest way to figure out what fits is a 20-minute Partner Call.
