I have approximately 5,000 to 6,000 direct coaching hours under my belt. I have coached several hundred individuals, worked with numerous teams, and addressed thousands of people in workshops.

I was trained at the Hudson Institute of Santa Barbara, which is like the Swarthmore of coaching. In the past several years I've taught various coaching classes for Hudson and also for NYU.

I take a whole-person viewpoint in coaching. So the various
threads of my background weave their way into my work:

• My legal training at Stanford and with Davis Polk & Wardwell
  honed my ability to decode the precise meaning of language and to think critically.
• My MBA studies at Stanford exposed me to business methods, and my experience co-founding an internet start-up exposed me to the excitements and risks of entrepreneurship.
• My service in the U.S. Foreign Service and my studying of Spanish, Chinese, Bengali and French enhanced my ability to put myself in other people's shoes.
• Reaching farther back, my participation in speech and debate competition schooled me in the principles and practices of effective communications.
• Finally, my experience as the first person from my high school to attend Harvard gave me the dual perspectives of both outsider and insider and was good practice in demystifying elitism.