About Me

Why did I become a professional coach?

My journey through burnout started slowly at first. My CV was growing, but my career wasn’t advancing the way I wanted it to. I loved taking care of my patients, but I had no ongoing mentor, sponsors, or defined career plan. I felt stuck and hopeless. After several years of trying harder and harder, I was struggling to keep going.

It was time to change my narrative.

I got a coach and set two new objectives: every “yes” had to either help me reach my potential or leave things better for those coming behind me. Change wasn’t easy, but my coach supported, challenged, and helped me view myself through a different lens. No more distorted images, no more stories. I developed a clear picture of my values and goals, and self-compassion for the road I had travelled personally and professionally. My “second mountain” became clear and I decided to become a professional coach. Coaching others for success is now my passion.

Coaching and Well-being

My path to coaching started through my work with the Women’s Empowerment & Leadership Initiative (WELI) within the Society for Pediatric Anesthesia. I earned a Certificate in Evidence-Based Coaching from Fielding Graduate University, and then qualified as an Associate Certified Coach through the International Coaching Federation.

I am a Senior Faculty and Affiliate Coach with Lodestar Consulting & Executive Coaching, specializing in trauma responsive coaching, including organizational trauma and culture change. I’m also thrilled to be a coach for the American Medical Women’s Association ELEVATE program for developing women physicians as leaders.

I am strongly committed to wellbeing and believe in both individual and systemic approaches. I believe in the importance of mindfulness for personal wellbeing and I teach and lead meditation groups and workshops.I’m also completing a two-year Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification with Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield and pursuing a Master’s degree at Pepperdine University in Organizational Development.

Personal and Professional Life

I’m a wife, and mother to three amazing, dynamic, and very individual daughters. I also have two young grandsons so I’m learning about raising boys! Maintaining a balance between personal and professional life is a constant juggling act, always. I love biking, reading, piano, travel, and cooking when I’m not working.

As a Professor of Clinical Anesthesia and Fellow of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, I have served in multiple leadership and mentoring/teaching roles throughout my career while navigating life’s ups and downs. I continue to work part time in the cardiac OR while coaching and getting my Master’s degree in Organizational Development.

Next to caring for my patients, my greatest professional achievement is my book, Congenital Cardiac Anesthesia: A Case-based Approach, published by Cambridge University Press (2021) – everything you ever wanted to know about anesthesia for patients with congenital heart disease. After dreaming it, designing it, and then doing it I believe I can do anything!

Credentials

Certificate in Evidence-Based Coaching, Fielding Graduate University

Associate Certified Coach (ACC), International Coaching Federation

Certified Trauma Informed Professional Coach (TIPC™)

Senior Faculty and Affiliate Coach, Lodestar Consulting & Executive Coaching, specializing in DEI and trauma-responsive coaching

Coach for ELEVATE (Certificate in Leadership for Women Physicians program), American Medical Women’s Association

Fellow, Institute of Coaching at McLean, affiliate of Harvard Medical School

Everything DiSC™ Certified Practitioner

Women’s Empowerment Leadership Initiative (WELI) via Society for Pediatric Anesthesia – Advisory Board Member and Coach, 2018 to present

Congenital Cardiac Anesthesia Society (CCAS) – Founder, Fellows’ Coaching/Mentoring Initiative 2020
Board of Directors 2021–2025

American Society of Anesthesiologists
Committee for Women in Anesthesiology
Committee for Professional Development
Committee for Physician Well-being

Chair, Working Group for Long-term Mentoring Vision, Ad hoc Committee for Mentoring, American Society of Anesthesiologists

What does this book have to do with coaching and professional development? Everything!!

The number of patients surviving with congenital heart disease keeps rising, and there aren’t always enough pediatric cardiac anesthesiologists to care for them when they need a non-cardiac procedure.

Someone needed to write a book to help caregivers. Why me? Because I had the knowledge, the expertise, the connections, and the passion. And most importantly, because it helped me finally demonstrate to my own harshest critic, me, that I could do anything I put my mind to.

It was joy, a privilege, and a challenge. It was more work than I could have ever dreamed and made me more than a little crazy at times, but we created something important that will help our patients and our colleagues.