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I spent last week in a few different rooms, surrounded by amazingly interesting and accomplished people. People who have built businesses, led teams, navigated change, and achieved plenty in their own right. And, inevitably, the conversation kept coming back to AI. Which tools are you using? Have you tried the latest version? What are you automating? How much do you trust an AI agent to run parts of your life? There were fascinating conversations, plenty of recommendations, a

I used to be pretty good at ignoring red flags. Many years ago, when I was first building my client base in executive search, I said yes to almost every assignment I could get. I was excited to win the business, eager to prove myself and, frankly, needed the clients. So even when a potential client had unrealistic expectations, wasn't quite ready to hire or kept changing the brief, I found ways to explain it away. We'll figure it out. They'll come around. This could lead to s

Okay, I think it’s finally time for me to tackle the topic of Focus. Focus of your positioning to be specific. I haven’t written much about it before, probably because it feels so fundamental. Of course focus matters. And yet, so many of my coaching conversations seem to end up there. A senior leader is leaving corporate life and trying to build a consulting or fractional practice. Another is deep into a job search and wondering whether they should broaden it. Someone else is

Since coming back from my summer break in Austria and throwing myself back into the pace and energy of New York, I've been out and about a lot - having conversations with different people across fashion, business, technology and leadership. And there's something I keep noticing that I wanted to write about today, because it’s been coming up – one way or another – in almost every conversation. It’s a shift in what people seem to want, what they’re craving, and what they’re sta

Last edition, I wrote about what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a layoff. I shared the story of a client who spent two weeks in professional limbo. She sensed something was wrong. She was told everything was fine. Meanwhile, the people around her already knew what was coming. This week, I want to flip the script and talk about the person on the other side of that conversation. The leader who has to sit someone on their team down, look them in the eye and deliver

A client of mine lost her job recently. But that's not where this story actually begins. She had reached out to me a few weeks BEFORE it happened. Before there was anything concrete to point to. Before she had a single piece of evidence she could put on a table and say, this, this is what I'm worried about. She reached out because she had a feeling. The kind that lives in your body before your brain has caught up to it. The kind that wakes you up at 3am and doesn't give you

It's summer. And if you're reading this from an office that is half-empty, or a desk that feels quieter than usual, or a calendar that - for the first time since January - actually has some breathing room in it: I want to say something to you directly. You can leave early today. Not because you've finished everything. You haven't. You never will. The to-do list does not end - it just changes shape. Not because someone told you it was okay. Nobody is going to tell you that. B

I remember the exact moment I realized I was in over my head. I was sitting at my desk with a job brief in front of me, a list of target companies on my screen, and the phone — feeling, in that moment, like the most terrifying object in the room. I had been working in executive search for a few years by then. I knew the industry. I knew the process. I had sat in on hundreds of candidate conversations, managed the logistics of searches from beginning to end, supported senior c

We were in Austria when it happened. My husband — born and bred in Brooklyn, a lifelong Knicks fan who has lived through every heartbreak this team has so generously provided over the decades — was not in New York for the moment he has been waiting for most of his adult life. We were in Vienna. The trip had been planned long before we could ever entertain the possibility of the Knicks actually making it to the Finals. And so there we were, over 4,000 miles away, watching from

In my last article, I wrote about AI as a consensus machine. About how the race to adopt, integrate, and optimize for AI might be producing the opposite of what we're hoping for — smoothing away the rough edges of original thinking, replacing instinct with output, and delivering the most agreeable answer when what we actually need is the most honest one. The response surprised me. Not because people disagreed. But because of how many people wrote back and said some version of

I have written critically about AI before. And since then, it feels like the criticism has been growing. Today I have more thoughts I felt I needed to share. Some of them may be unpopular. But they could mean the difference between actually moving forward as humans, leaders or businesses — or falling steadily behind. So here it is: The AI-enabled world we are all rushing toward may actually be producing the opposite of what we're hoping for. Not because AI isn't powerful. It

I once worked with a senior leader who told me he did his best thinking in the car. Not in strategy sessions. Not in offsites. Not in the back-to-back leadership meetings that filled his calendar from 8am to 6pm. In the car. Alone. On the drive home. That thirty-minute window — no agenda, no notifications, no one needing anything from him — was where things clicked. Where the tangled problem from Tuesday's meeting suddenly had an answer. Where he'd realize what he actua

A reader wrote to me after the last edition of this newsletter. She said she'd tried it. The Courage Challenge — one hour of complete presence with someone she loved. No phone. No half-attention. Just her, fully there. And she said it was harder than she expected. Not because she was distracted. But because when the distractions fell away, something else surfaced. A restlessness she couldn't quite name. An urge to fill the silence. A strange discomfort with just... being ther

I lost someone recently. It was sudden. There was no warning. No time to prepare. No final conversation I knew would be final. One day they were here. The next — without explanation, without transition, without any of the things we tell ourselves we'll say when the time is right — they were gone. And that's the thing about sudden loss that nobody warns you about. It doesn't just take the person. It takes every future moment you had assumed was still available to you. The coff

A few months ago, I sat across from a client of mine who had spent seventeen years building an impressive career at a global firm. She was smart. Accomplished. The kind of person whose LinkedIn profile makes you feel slightly behind on your own life. She had recently left her role — by choice — to explore consulting. AND she was stuck. Not on the logistics. Not on the pricing or the outreach or the contracts. She was stuck on a question she hadn't expected to find so hard: Wh

“It’s lonely at the top.” I was reminded of just how true—and how heavy—that can feel in a conversation last week with a senior leader I’ve been coaching. Our work often centers around solving real, tangible challenges—decisions, team dynamics, competing priorities. But just as importantly, I serve as something else: a sounding board, a mirror, a thinking partner. A space where he doesn’t have to perform leadership—he can simply be. This time, he paused mid-conversation and s

I recently attended several panels about the job market. Different industries, different speakers, different perspectives. And yet the message was surprisingly consistent. The market is tough. AI is accelerating change. And many of the rules we used to rely on are dissolving. Again and again, the discussion turned toward the same question: What actually makes someone stand out now? Not surprisingly, the answer wasn’t just technical expertise. The people who will thrive in the

I almost didn’t go. It had been one of those days – back-to-back calls, brain slightly fried. Low energy. The couch was calling. It had just started raining outside. And the event felt optional…at best. I stood in front of my closet longer than necessary. Changed once. Changed again. Checked the time. Considered texting an excuse. You can skip it, I told myself. You’ve already been productive today. No one will notice. And deep inside of me, a familiar debate was playing out:

Uncertainty has a way of changing any room. A difficult email lands in your inbox. A decision shifts above you. A market changes. A plan falls through. A client pulls back. A conversation doesn’t go the way you expected it would. In those moments, it can feel like something is happening to you. Pressure rises. Your chest tightens. Your thoughts speed up. You move quickly—because you feel the urge to defend, explain, fix, withdraw. And it all feels automatic. But in the middle

You’re asked a simple question. “What do you do?” “What have you been working on?” “What are you proud of lately?” And suddenly… your brain short-circuits. You know you have words. You use them all the time. But in this moment? Gone. You start talking, then stop. You hear yourself saying “um” more than usual. You’re halfway through a sentence and already wondering how to soften the ending. Your mind is racing: Don’t sound braggy. Don’t make it weird. Don’t take up too much