Who is Ellen?

When you work with Ellen, you are not getting a cookie-cutter coach with a formula. You are getting someone whose background is genuinely different, and that difference shows up in every conversation.

About Ellen

Every session is about you: your story, your transition, your goals. You get someone who spent years as the liaison between very different groups of people, executive leadership, sales, creative, and legal, which means she has spent a career learning how to really listen, ask the right questions, and pick up quickly on what you actually need, not what you think you need. She had to figure out what the important questions were, who to ask them of, and what to follow up on. That skill does not go away. You feel it the moment you start talking to her.

You get someone who has navigated her own transitions. She was laid off from a job she had held for a long time and had to sit with that uncertainty and figure out what came next. She struggled with a real confidence gap between who she was at home, raising a family and feeling completely in charge, and who she was at work, where showing up with that same strength did not come easily. She worked through it. She knows what that kind of disconnect feels like from the inside.

You also get the perspective of a painter who has been making art for years and looks at the world differently because of it. That creative lens is not something she leaves at the door. It is the reason you will start to see your own situation from angles you had not considered before.

And because Ellen has coached herself, she knows exactly what it feels like when the right question lands and something finally shifts. That is what she is there to do for you.

YOUR COACH

MY TRAINING

Coaching Training:

  • Certification from TCTA
  • Certified Crisis Counselor
  • Certified Life Coach from The Academy of Modern Applied Psychology

Previous Training:

  • B.A. U.C. Berkeley, Practice of Art
  • Lean Six Sigma Green Belt

Here's what brought her to this work:

01

Why Transitions?

When I went through the program to become a certified life coach, I was strongly encouraged to pick an area of expertise. I started with retirement. My father was a doctor, and he told me a long time ago that when his patients had nothing planned when they retired, they disintegrated emotionally and physically very quickly, compared to the patients who had plans and had a purpose. That stuck with me.
But gradually, as I talked to more people, I realized that retirement is just one type of transition. It’s the transitions that people struggle with, regardless of what the specifics are. So I broadened my focus, which also broadened my client base.

02

My Approach

I’m a certified life coach from an ICF-accredited program. I hold a BA from the University of California, Berkeley. I write for Medium and have been a guest on numerous podcasts and radio programs.
I am also a painter, and that shapes how I listen to my clients and how I come up with solutions for their situations. It shapes how I help them notice things and look at their lives from a different perspective. My ability to help is in part based on how I look at the world, and I look at the world from a creative perspective. It’s not about whether a client cares about art. It’s what I bring to the conversation, regardless of what the client’s situation is.

03

The Aha Moment

My favorite part of this work is when someone has that aha moment.
I worked with a woman who had been working full-time at a corporation for over 20 years. She raised a family. Her husband was running his own business. She worked really hard. Then the corporation offered her an early retirement package, and she took it. And then she thought she needed another full-time job. She had a lot of guilt about not working full-time.
I was able to help her look at that assumption and help her understand that it was not her only option. When she finally got it, after we worked together, that she didn’t have to work in another demanding full-time job, she was so happy. It opened up all kinds of possibilities for her.
This is what led me on this path, and I love seeing how my clients “get it” after working together.

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