Following the Thread: From Teaching to Leadership and Human Potential

I didn’t build a career.

I followed a thread—sometimes laughing at how everywhere it looked while I was living it.

From Classrooms to Questions

I began as a grade-school teacher and AmeriCorps member, serving in classrooms for years and eventually working in some of the best private schools in Silicon Valley—teaching children whose parents were running world-renowned tech companies. I loved my students. I struggled with the system. Financial strain and creative constraints collided with a deeper knowing: what I believed education could be—and what I was delivering—were no longer aligned.

So I stepped away.

Not because I was unfocused—but because a question wouldn’t leave me alone:

What actually helps humans regulate, heal, think clearly, and lead under pressure?

That question took me everywhere.

Immersing Deep

I immersed myself in subconscious, somatic, and trauma-informed work, studying with pioneers like Stanislav Grof. I became licensed in clinical medical hypnotherapy and built a thriving practice in the Bay Area, working with veterans and others navigating trauma and addiction at the nervous-system level.

I also trained extensively in mindset and performance psychology with Tolly Burkan and Tony Robbins—not for motivation, but for behavioral precision, state regulation, and applied change under pressure.

I spent years in India studying yoga and life-energy systems under Sikh and Hindu lineages—sitting with true gurus, not curated versions of them. That training didn’t make me abstract. It made me steady. It taught me how to remain present in intensity, hold space for others, and help people navigate complexity without collapsing.

Guiding Others Under Pressure

Along the way, I consulted and coached hundreds of startup founders and tech executives—guiding them through scaling decisions, alignment challenges, and high-stakes communication. I co-founded a Bumble-like startup myself. It failed. And it gave me firsthand insight into leadership under pressure, organizational dynamics, and what clarity in execution really looks like.

In Los Angeles, I served women healing from sexual trauma and reclaiming agency, teaching and supporting hundreds of women, community members, and survivors. I later founded a medically accurate, emotional-intelligence-centered sex education nonprofit that reached thousands of students—until COVID collapsed it.

Each of these experiences sharpened my ability to design programs, build consensus, facilitate transformation, and foster environments where people can learn, grow, and perform with trust.

Lessons from Grief

And still, the deepest education didn’t come from credentials or programs.

I lost a soul sister and partner. I lost my maternal grandmother—and with her, the ache of time I wish I had spent differently. Grief stripped away performance and left only what mattered. It taught me pacing. Reverence. How costly silence can be when connection is possible.

Grief reshaped how I listen, how I stay, how I hold silence, and how seriously I take love, acknowledgment and repair.

Leadership, Speaking, and Embodied Practice

Along the way, I coached hundreds of TEDx and TED speakers, spoke on stages myself, and led corporate firewalking and embodied leadership experiences for corporate teams—not as spectacle, but as a lesson in trust, team cohesion, and resilience under pressure.

Eventually, I studied mediation and negotiation with mentors at Harvard Law—not to argue better, but to help people stay human in disagreement. In 2021, after a personal political re-centering, I joined Braver Angels, where I continue to facilitate and moderate complex conversations across ideological divides.

I’ve also released guided meditation work, including Freedom and Truth-Telling, because some wisdom can’t be debated—it has to be felt.

Threading the Story

Threading through all of this is my origin story: a Catholic upbringing, a Vietnamese refugee family—a refugee boat baby.

Early lessons were clear: quiet is safer. Read the room. Don’t draw attention. Those instincts kept people alive.

Later, they became skills: attunement, discernment, and the ability to sense what’s needed before it’s spoken. And eventually, a choice—to speak when it matters.

The Lessons That Stick

Looking back, none of this was random—just wide.

•Teaching taught me how minds form.
•Trauma work taught me what breaks them—and what heals them.
•Mindset training taught me how change actually sticks.
•India taught me life-energy, discipline, and grounded presence.
•Veterans taught me reverence for lived experience.
•Founders and the most elite executives taught me how pressure reveals character.
•Startups taught me humility and systems thinking.
•Nonprofits taught me program design, facilitation, and consensus-building at scale.
•Grief taught me truth.
•Mediation taught me how to hold complexity without collapsing into certainty.

Where It Leads Now

Organizations don’t struggle because people lack intelligence. They struggle when people can’t regulate, listen, tell the truth, or stay connected under pressure.

My work now lives right there.

I design and lead spaces where people think clearly, communicate honestly, and navigate conflict without burning bridges or themselves. Where engagement isn’t manufactured. Where leadership isn’t performative. Where focus finally emerges—not from narrowing life, but from integrating it.

So yes—my path looks everywhere.

But the thread has always been the same.