About Me

Hi! I'm Liz! (they/she)

I’m a queer leadership coach with a rich background in leadership development facilitation and consulting. I specialize in coaching queer folks to build radical leadership confidence, grow their emotional intelligence, and develop a leadership style that’s fully their own. My approach to this work is rooted in a deeply held belief: each of us is inherently brilliant, and the best solutions to our leadership challenges come from our deep self-knowledge.

Prior to leading my practice, I spent over a decade in the corporate space (retail and tech) as a coach, leadership development program leader, and organizational effectiveness consultant. I built programs to help emerging and senior leaders tackle their most complex development priorities, from executive presence and EQ to team performance and inclusive leadership.

These days, you'll find me coaching individuals and teams, facilitating leadership offsites, or ruminating on wholehearted leadership over a cup of (decaf) coffee.

I’m an eternal optimist, a bit of a chaos witch, a frequent teller of not-that-funny jokes, a lifelong artist (current love: cyanotype), relentlessly curious, a deep empath, and—despite all outward appearances—definitely an introvert.

While I specialize in queer leadership coaching, I invite leaders from all backgrounds to explore how we might queer leadership - disrupting dominant cultural norms and holding space for humanity at the center of our workplaces. I work with teams, organizations, and executives across sectors to build more emotionally intelligent, connected, and values-aligned workplaces.

Whether you're a queer leader navigating complexity, or part of a team working to lead with more clarity and care, I’m here to support you.

Photo of Liz in a lush green park looking at the camera, smiling. She has purple hair and is wearing purple-framed specs, gold layered earrings, and a gold necklace with an inverted triangle pendant which has a unicorn embossed and a text engraved that reads "femme". She is in a black sleeveless top with her ornate arm tattoos showing.

🏵️Life Lesson #1: Find the weird kids and stick with them. They will have your back every time.

The first thing that you need to know about me was that I was a real weird kid. I loved ‘imagination’ games more than sports (okay…I downright sucked at sports, y’all). I was constantly missing the memo about the ‘right’ haircut/tennis shoes/music, and never could learn the running man.

I spent a lot of my childhood feeling deeply disconnected, hiding in perfectionism and academic achievement. And then…I went to an art high school and found my people – weirdos who came to class in costumes, people who were constantly creating something just for the heck of creating, folks who really got me.

🏵️Life Lesson #2: Success by someone else’s definition can be a REAL lonely place.

And still…I was so drawn in by the allure of perfection and achievement. I spent my twenties taking on one leadership role after another, in my community and at work. Turns out that leadership is a tough gig for a perfectionist; I found myself caught in a cycle of perfection, achievement, imposter feelings, anxiety (rinse, repeat – sound familiar at all?)

This cycle compounded over the years, until I found myself mid-twenties, consumed by anxiety which was completely invisible to everyone else. I was achieving all of the time, winning awards at work, executing my dream projects in community, and totally miserable.

How did I escape that cycle? Well, I did a TON of work, starting with getting real about my pain:

The corporate world often felt at odds with how my beloved queer community relates to one another. I felt stretched between my desire to be successful in my career and my queer femme values of inclusion, empathy, vulnerability and authenticity. That wasn’t going to get any better until I figured out how to bring my whole weird self to both my work as a leader and my work with teams.
Leading in community didn’t really feel a whole lot better. If you’ve ever felt SO lonely in the midst of a group of queer folks, you know what I mean. Our community can have HIGH standards for our leaders; I felt like I needed to be ‘on’ all of the time. I needed to figure out how to let myself be messy and imperfect, while still showing up as a leader.

Then I figured out what I needed to work on, what skills to grow, what to let go of, how to align my leadership with my values and my experience. Now here I am, with so much more room to breathe, and so much more clarity about what I need so that I can stay sure of myself.

🏵️Life Lessons #3 - ??: Great leaders show up with authenticity & emotional intelligence. We lead with creativity and adapt as things change around us. We know the value of radical inclusion. Queer folks are uniquely equipped to embody ALL of that.

I love helping teams and leaders of all identities bring these values into their everyday leadership and organizational culture.

Leadership development is hard work; it’s incremental, and ongoing. The smallest changes are the most important ones. The critical thing is to be gentle, and to give ourselves lots of permission to fail and learn.

I am so excited to share all of this with you, and to support you in finding your way.💜

My pronouns are they/them or she/her.

A note on my various identities, which I believe are relevant in this work, as in all of life: I am an antiracist, white, currently able-bodied, queer/genderqueer femme. I am college-educated and grew up middle-class. I believe that allyship, accompliceship, and co-conspiratorship are a matter of practice, not titles. I take these practices seriously and will always believe you when you tell me about your experiences of oppression.

Queer- and transphobia are outcroppings of white supremacy, and many common leadership pain points are connected to white supremacy culture. These truths show up in how I coach and facilitate; I also prioritize group facilitation techniques that support equitable participation (using a circle/speaking order, frequent breakouts to support relationship-building, etc.).

Before starting my full-time practice, I spent over a decade in the corporate space (retail and technology) as a coach, leadership development program leader, and organizational effectiveness consultant, building programs that support emerging leaders in tackling their most complex development priorities. I also ran a small non-profit performance production company for many years; we produced a monthly queer burlesque show that raised over $20,000 for organizations serving our community – with SO. MUCH. GLITTER.

Who I work with:

I support leaders and teams across corporate, nonprofit, and public sectors through coaching, consulting, and leadership development. I spent four years coaching senior leaders at Amazon as an internal coach and leadership development practitioner. I have also coached leaders in other corporations (Outreach, Microsoft, Spotify), the nonprofit sector (Washington State Community Action Partnership, QLaw Foundation, Sierra Club), and local government (King County, WA).

Coaching Specialties:

Queer & LGBTQIA+ Leadership Development
Emotionally Intelligent Leadership
Executive Coaching (Corporate & Nonprofit)
Team Effectiveness & Leadership Transitions
Navigating the Corporate Space with Authenticity

My BA is in modern dance from Mills College; this is where I learned to be a lifelong artist and came out as SO queer to myself and anyone else who would listen.

I earned my coaching credentials through iPEC, a rigorous training program accredited by the International Coaching Federation. I am also certified in several tools, including the Emotional Intelligence Inventory (EQ-i 2.0), the Korn Ferry Assessment of Leadership Potential, DiSC, and the Influence Style Indicator.

Schedule your free consult!