We are often told to pick a single, safe lane and stay inside a predictable box. For over twenty-five years, I chose a different path. My story is not a collection of passive titles or a neat corporate resume. It is a story of tough, unconventional choices—moments where I had to look deep discomfort in the eye, refuse to compromise my core values of Respect, Integrity, and Freedom, and choose to run towards something truer.
If you are standing at a personal or professional threshold, feeling the weight of a rigid script, or wondering if it’s possible to lead and live with uncompromised authenticity, I invite you to read the chapters that forged my perspective. My journey gave me the freedom to step beyond conventional boundaries, and today, I am here to fully partner with you as you navigate yours and unlock your own authentic growth.
Early in my journey, the fear of not making rent as a freelance English teacher led me to compromise my core value of freedom. I accepted a secure, full-time permanent contract in Milan. It immediately felt like a thick chain around my neck, made heavier by rampant workplace politics, patriarchy, low salaries, and zero meritocracy.
But the real friction was structural. When I was in my late twenties—already a university graduate with a BS in Computer Science, an independent solo traveller, and someone who had successfully run her own freelancing business—my boss told me to wear a low-neck shirt for a major client presentation the following day. All his patriarchal lens could see was a pretty face and my anatomy. I realised then that in a closed matrix, your merit is constantly under siege. I knew I needed to find an alternative. So, when an opportunity presented itself, I left my family and friends behind and moved to Germany—a foreign country where I didn’t speak a single word of the language, choosing discomfort over safety to reclaim my trajectory.
In Germany, I threw myself into software quality and agile frameworks within a heavily male-dominated tech environment. I earned a promotion, but only on paper. A male German colleague without a degree was given the full financial package, while I was left short. It took a true ally standing by my side, asking HR the burning questions—Is it because she’s a foreigner? Is it because she’s a woman?—to force an immediate correction and six months of backpay.
Yet, the systemic bias followed me. The corporate coffee-corner gossip immediately whispered that I only got the job because of my curves, completely erasing my technical competence. In those isolating moments, I desperately needed a mentor. Someone I could turn to, look to, and feel represented by: an expat woman in IT leadership who understood the terrain exactly. I looked everywhere, and I found absolutely no one.
Right then, I made a silent vow: I would become that person.
Later on, when a corporate reorg eliminated my role due to political manoeuvring, I rejected their uninspiring alternative, took the severance package, wrote a business plan, and co-founded my company to work on Geek Divers. I refused to wait for retirement to live on my own terms.
In 2016, my partner and I became dive professionals and entered a life of digital nomadism across Southeast Asia, embedding ourselves directly with our target clients: dive centres in the world’s warm waters. Backrolling from a wooden boat in the middle of the ocean straight into the deep blue was both exhilarating and terrifying. I did it because I wanted to experience that underwater world exactly as it is: observing sharks, dugongs, and massive turtles in their own habitat, finding equal reward in the quiet movement of a tiny nudibranch or a protective clownfish on its anemone. It taught me how to step out of my comfort zone and navigate non-linear environments with flexibility and zero pretence.
As a tech entrepreneur, I personally interviewed hundreds of dive centre managers, learning the hard way how to conduct customer interviews, prioritise SaaS features, and enforce boundaries when some clients tried to distort our vision. Then, Covid hit. The global hospitality industry collapsed overnight, our clients couldn’t pay their fees, and we had to stop our nomadic life to pay our bills. We had to get creative. My partner found a development gig, and I threw myself back into the agile world, brushing up my scrum master skills and accelerating my growth as an agile coach. In 2021, I accepted another permanent job. Though the corporate employee contract felt like a chain again, I chose it consciously because of the people I met in the interviews. It was a beautiful, highly effective two years—until decisions from above fractured the team. A part of me didn’t want to believe the chapter was over, but at the end of 2024, I made the tough choice to leave.
Stepping out of that final corporate role allowed me to dedicate myself fully to my true calling: building my coaching practice, sharpening my skills, and expanding into professional supervision—a discipline that entered my life by chance and for which I am profoundly grateful.
Every tough choice I made opened an unexpected door. I could never have accepted the opportunity to coach global executive elites at the London Business School (LBS) if I hadn’t had the courage to leave my senior agile coaching career behind to set up my own ecosystem. Similarly, I would never have developed deep customer empathy or clarity of vision if I hadn’t stepped away from a comfortable corporate contract to co-found Geek Divers and personally interview hundreds of business owners across Southeast Asia. And I would never have stepped into my true role as a professional supervisor if I hadn’t experienced the isolation of a tech environment with no mentor to turn to, which forced me to stop looking for that leader and choose to become her instead.
When you sit across from me, you are partnering with someone who has lived every nuance of professional transition, systemic bias, entrepreneurial risk, and corporate pressure. I turn everything to the max: I listen deeply, I fully partner, I trust giving my all, and I bring my whole, multi-dimensional self to the room.
ICF PCC (Professional Certified Coach): Verified by the International Coaching Federation, demonstrating hundreds of hours of high-level application, rigorous assessment, and uncompromised individual coaching competencies.
London Business School (LBS): Affiliated Executive Coach and Facilitator, trusted to partner with and guide global executive elites through fast-moving corporate matrices.
ICAgile Certified Expert in Agile Coaching (ICE-AC): The highest independent milestone in agile coaching. This expert-level validation requires a rigorous live demonstration and oral defense of mastery in human and team systems.
BS in Computer Science: The analytical backbone that drives my systems thinking, structural logic, and deep-water understanding of complexity.
EMCC SP (Senior Practitioner): Recognized by the European Mentoring and Coaching Council for advanced capability, holding high-trust developmental spaces for experienced professionals.
EMCC ESIA (European Supervision Individual Award): Fully accredited professional supervisor, validated to provide a vital, separate space for ethical reflection, practitioner well-being, and practice oversight.
I was never running away from the constraints, the politics, or the challenges. I was taking that discomfort, reflecting on it, and using it to prepare myself to run towards something else that I truly wanted.
If you are staring down an uncertain professional future, feeling frustrated that your relentless efforts aren’t yielding the results you want, or carrying the deep exhaustion of a daily dissonance between your core values and what you are expected to do at work—you do not have to navigate this transition alone.
You can have a dedicated thinking partner. Someone who listens without a script, partners with you completely, and helps you untangle the noise so you can find your own authentic way forward. If you are ready to stop waiting and start running towards what you truly want, let’s begin the conversation.