Coaching gave a name to work I had been doing for years.
I have been helping people think more clearly for most of my career.
Throughout three decades as a professor and senior academic leader, I was often the person people came to when the relationship was difficult, the role had changed, the politics were complicated, or they were doing excellent work and still not being seen.
They did not always need advice. Often, they needed someone who could listen carefully, notice the pattern, ask the harder question, and help them separate what mattered from everything around it.
I recognized those moments because I had lived many of them too.
Coaching was not a late-career reinvention. It is a continuation of the work I had already been doing, now with the time, focus, and intention it deserved.
Leadership is about what becomes possible for other people.
Leadership is not ultimately about how well the leader performs. It is about what becomes possible for the people working with and for her.
Across 30 years of teaching and every leadership role I held, I saw the same pattern: people grow when standards are real, support is real, and they know they matter. The best leaders do not leave those conditions to chance. They create them deliberately.
That means asking more than whether the work got done. It means paying attention to whether people are becoming more capable, more confident, and better able to exercise judgment of their own.
This belief shapes the way I coach. I am interested not only in what a leader wants to accomplish, but also in the conditions she is creating around her and the impact her leadership is having on the people she serves.
Pull quote: The measure of leadership is not only what the leader accomplishes. It is what becomes possible for other people.
CTA: Read My Leadership Insights
Experience that reaches beyond the coaching room
My coaching is informed by decades spent teaching, leading, making difficult decisions, and helping other people grow. I understand leadership not only as a subject of study, but as work I have been accountable for doing.
Block 1: Educator and Scholar
I earned my PhD in Marketing from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and spent 30 years in a business school, where I taught students and executives at many stages of their careers. I am now Professor Emerita.
Teaching sharpened my ability to listen, diagnose what is getting in the way, explain complex ideas clearly, and help people see strengths they may not yet recognize in themselves.
Block 2: Senior Leader
My leadership roles included Vice Provost, Associate Dean, department leadership, and Executive MBA leadership. I led through enterprise change, complicated stakeholder environments, competing institutional priorities, and decisions in which there was rarely a single obvious answer.
That experience matters in coaching because leadership problems are rarely tidy. They involve people, power, timing, history, loyalty, risk, and consequences.
Block 3: Developer of Women Leaders
For eight years, I led Breaking the Glass Ceiling, a leadership initiative that reached more than 1,500 participants and featured more than 65 leaders, with additional reach through Lakeshore PBS.
The program created space for women to have honest conversations about ambition, influence, barriers, opportunity, and the realities of leadership. Those conversations continue to shape my work today.
Warm, direct, and paying close attention
I am warm, but I am not vague.
I will tell you when I think you are underestimating yourself, avoiding the real issue, carrying work that belongs to someone else, or making a situation harder than it needs to be. I will also tell you when your instincts are sound and it is time to trust them.
My coaching is not cheerleading, and it is not evaluation. It is a rigorous, deeply human partnership built around what is actually happening, not the polished version you would put in a performance review.
I listen for what is being said, what is being avoided, and what has become so familiar that you may no longer see it clearly. Sometimes the work is about recognizing a strength you have taken for granted. Sometimes it is about naming a pattern that is limiting you. Often, it is about creating enough clarity that you can make a choice rather than simply react.
Pull quote: I will not tell you what to do. I will help you see clearly enough to decide.
CTA: Explore Coaching This should go to your coaching services page, not directly to scheduling.
Developing women leaders has never been separate from my work.
Long before coaching became my practice, developing women leaders was part of my work.
I founded Breaking the Glass Ceiling because women deserved honest conversation about the realities of leadership, not advice built on the assumption that the problem was their capability.
What I saw in those rooms has stayed with me. Women lean forward when someone finally names what they are experiencing and takes it seriously. They are not looking to be fixed. They are looking for language, perspective, community, and a clearer understanding of how leadership actually works.
That same belief informs my work through Papillon and the development of Ellevae. The formats are different, but the purpose is consistent: helping accomplished women lead with greater clarity, influence, and intention.
CTA: Explore Ellevae (link to ellevae.com)
Coaching Credentials and Leadership
Use a clean two-column list - prefer two columns next to each other
Education and Academic Leadership
PhD in Marketing, University of Michigan Ross School of Business
MBA, University of Michigan Ross School of Business
Professor Emerita, Purdue University Northwest
Former Vice Provost and Associate Dean, Purdue University Northwest
Three decades in business education, academic leadership, and executive development within the Purdue University system
Coaching and Professional Affiliations
Associate Certified Coach (ACC), International Coaching Federation
Certified in [exact assessment names]
Member-at-Large, ICF Chicago Board of Directors
Co-founder, ellevae
Founder and Executive leadership coach, Papillon Leadership Coaching
Books and Publications
Co-editor and contributing author,
Building Influence Capital: Coaching High-Performance Women
Contributing author,
Executive Coaching: Perspectives and Practices Across the Field
Bring the question you cannot quite resolve.
Bring the question you cannot quite resolve, the relationship that has become harder than it should be, or the opportunity you do not want to mishandle.
You do not need to arrive with a polished explanation or a perfectly defined goal. We can start with what is real and work from there.
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