My Story
Behavioral psychologist by training. Leadership strategist by conviction. Slightly obsessed with the gap between knowing and doing.
Sparking Curiosity
In a leadership meeting about strategic initiatives, I experienced alignment breakdown in real time.
I noticed tension between what felt like my values and business practicality. I also noticed something else: shame.
Sensing that discomfort, I acquiesced. My shame was relieved for the remainder of the conversation.
Later, however, something lingered: resentment.
The decisions made sense. What stood out wasn't misunderstanding. It was how quickly shame controlled my behavior. The moment discomfort emerged, my nervous system prioritized short-term relief over meaningful contribution.
Emerging Questions
That moment prompted a question: if I understand why decisions are made, what makes it so hard to fully stand behind them?
The more I reflected, the more I noticed a familiar pattern. I've worked in some remarkable environments with many admirable leaders. I've received exceptional education and greatly appreciated the learning.
And yet, there's not one leader whose thinking I've agreed with completely, without hesitation.
I wondered: what makes leadership so challenging? And maybe more important: what explains my own default to agreement when feeling discontent? Why do I tolerate resolution at the cost of honest contribution?
Exploring Patterns
My curiosity pulled me into leadership development literature, and I was immediately hooked.
The parallels between behavioral psychology and leadership theory seemed impossible to ignore. I found myself laughing out loud, noticing the same concepts described in entirely different language.
Across fields, the principles associated with effective behavior were remarkably consistent.
And yet, leaders who know these principles still struggle to execute them consistently, especially under pressure.
That's when I finally saw a realistic pathway to educating people about my absolute favorite subject: dialectical behavior therapy.
Developing Insight
So why does the gap between knowledge and behavioral execution exist?
The answer partially emerged through self-reflection. I recognized that my leaders never dismissed my thinking. They actually never had the opportunity to hear it in the first place.
Even with expertise in effective communication and emotion regulation, I remain guilty of avoiding hard conversations to minimize discomfort.
Not because I know better. Because knowing what to do and actually doing it are two very different things. And when people avoid naming their reality to regulate discomfort, organizations lose critical information. This is where leadership breaks down.
I started thinking that leadership is not a knowledge problem. It's a regulation one.
This insight became what I now call Regulated Leadership: the capacity to execute principled behavior in the hardest conditions.
MY PHILOSOPHY
I believe relationships are essential for meaningful work and meaningful lives.
I believe regulatory capacity is what makes relationships sustainable.
And I believe the more accurately we understand how humans function, the more capacity we have for effective communication, collaboration, and creating things that matter.
I’m perfectly flawed, deeply curious, and endlessly interested in how humans actually work.
I've spent my career in the gap between what people know and what they do — studying it, teaching it, and (more frequently than I like to admit) living it myself.