I’ve been on a journey.

I had a previous career in the tech sector, and I’ve been a software developer, systems engineer, sales manager, product manager, and more. Twenty years ago I realized that this career was not “it”, and I took the leap of returning to basics, and to school, to try and find the work I was called to. That turned out to be the work I do now. I didn’t get there overnight. I’ve had high-power jobs with a six-figure income and also lived below the poverty line for long stretches of time. I share all this to let you know, if we happen to work together: I’ve been there. I know what it is to struggle and wonder if it’s worth it, to lie sleepless at night wondering if I’ll be able to sustain a roof over my head, and to find the will and the support to keep going, and find the other side. Which I eventually did. For most of the last twenty years, I’ve worked creating and facilitating transformative group process containers, either as faculty in other programs, or constructing and offering my own workshops. And for the past decade or so, I’ve spent a lot of time working one-on-one with others from every walk of life, from many different nations. You can find out more about that on the rest of this website.

Speaking of having been there, I’ve also spend a good number of years in therapy myself, working through the effects of a difficult and sometimes violent childhood. Most of what I’ve come to learn about working with trauma, I’ve learned through practice with myself and those who helped me. So it’s not just an intellectual process for me. There’s a difference between someone who can empathize with what you have gone through and someone who can recognize what you have gone through. It matters. And the proof of the possibility of healing is that I’m still here, to pay it forward with others.

I’ve been a Buddhist practitioner since my late teens (which was also a sort of leap, since I was raised in a conservative Catholic family who couldn’t understand or accept my decision to go down a different spiritual path. I know what that’s like too.) And I’m a current senior student of Thomas Hübl, with whom I’ve been working for over a decade.

I know I’m lucky to still be here, and that, even though I certainly brought my own will and capacity for healing and growth to the table, I’m lucky to have healed enough to liberate my own purpose in being. I love that I get to sit with others and participate in the complexity, suffering, and joy of their lives, finding out things together. It’s a privilege I don’t take lightly.

I live in the Seattle area with my partner Thalia, her two teenage sons, and two cats. I’m a lifelong musician, playing several instruments, composing and singing my own material, singing in a choir, and hosting song circles and community karaoke whenever I can. Singing chorally is a great metaphor for how I experience life - unless everyone sings their own part, it doesn’t work, so everyone needs to show up with whatever they bring. But choral music only exists as a whole thing, a sound made by many voices at once.