If you want to get something done, just tell me it's not possible to achieve.

That's how I became the first Director of Sustainability and developed the first green building materials product line in the
United States. Because every industry expert told me it couldn't be done, and especially by a girl who didn't know the industry. Well as turns out we made millions of dollars, got the competitive edge in a crucial new market, and helped evolve the nation toward green building. One of the greatest compliments this girl ever got came after giving a talk on materials use at the national association of home builders annual conference. A builder came up and asked who my dad worked for, since "girls don't know those things unless they grow up in the industry." It's also how I became one of the first coaches for Members of the US House of Representatives along with my awesome business partner, Erika Gabaldon (also on PeopleJam - check her out!). Our company is dedicated to supporting people of all professions in the public eye to develop their own compelling, even audacious, visions for the future, and realizing them through breakthrough leadership.

I have two little kids, so I work three days a week and roll around on the floor with the wee ones on the other days (while doing my best to ignore my Treo!). I'm really proud of the new book I together with seven other contributors that's out in June. It's called Winning Without Compromising...Yourself, and if you want to change the way that politics is done get a copy for your representatives. Seriously, put your inscription in there so they know you care about how our communities are run!

Let's see, I also co-authored Visionary Women Inspiring the World: 12 Paths to Personal Power, which a lot of people have told that they like. So you may want to check it out - if it's still in print...

I love to learn. I majored in sociology at the University of California at San Diego - a degree which left me uniquely qualified for graduate school... So after living in Germany for a few years I got an MBA from the Monterey Institute of International Studies. They called me the MBA hippie since I specialized in Environmental Management and thought that massive layoffs and child labor were ehitcal issues. Go figure...

After working way too hard making other people rich, I dropped out of the executive rat race. For years friends and acquaintances had been asking me to be a sounding board for them through career changes, Big Decisions, and challenging management issues. After a while I figured out that they were asking me to be thier coach - and I really loved supporting people to get to the next level.

I decided that, at this juncture in my life, I want to be supporting high performers as they change the world. And to make sure I became the best coaching I can be, I studied at the Coaches Training Institute and graduated as a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach. In the last five years, I've gotten to be pretty good at adult development and getting people through the breakthroughs that transform their lives and opportunities. In doing so, I've racked up well over a thousand paid coaching hours and received the Professional Certified Coach credential from the International Coach Federation.

So, some fun things to know about me...
• My neighbors and I make award-winning wine.
• I love to sing karaoke on our annual trips to Japan. Seriously, my husband and I learn songs in Japanese which impresses our hosts and shows them how much we really do care.
• I participated in one of the last cold war cultural exchanges between the US and the former Soviet Union. I represented UCSD in an exchange between the UC system and Leningrad State University. We Americans spent the summer of 1989 in the Soviet Union (actually my second trip there), and then we hosted the Russian students in the Fall. Then the wall came down a month later. When I was in high school I thought that history was over and nothing interesting would happen in may lifetime. Yeah, not so much. We live in interesting times and, no, that’s not a curse.