For the first fifteen years of my career I was doubling my income every three or four years, rising through the ranks and enjoying an epicurean lifestyle. In 1995 I joined Ernst & Young Consulting to pursue a career in business management consulting and to pursue a Master of Science in Information and Telecommunication Systems from Johns Hopkins University. At Ernst & Young Consulting I became an expert in business process improvement, information system design & implementation, organizational development & training, and leadership development & coaching services. It was here I realized my love and gift for coaching.

LEARNING TO BE A COACH

In 1996 I hired Teri-E Belf, founder of Success Unlimited Network, as a personal life coach. Although I was very successful I felt something was missing. Teri-E helped put my life in perspective. She opened me up to spirituality as something distinct and different from my childhood religion. In fact, Teri-E Belf featured my story in her latest book, Coaching with Spirit. She taught me how to be a personal life coach with a focus on life planning. In addition, she taught me the ethics of coaching which she helped design for the International Coaching Federation, the coaching credentialing board. I used these skills during my career at Ernst & Young Consulting.

As Senior Manager (one rank below partner) at Ernst & Young Consulting where I was responsible for career development for over two dozen individuals I realized I had a real knack for finding the potentials in people and providing opportunities for them to shine. Where most of my Senior Manager peers were stealing the limelight for themselves hoping to make partner, I was in the back room with my consultants coaching them towards excellence. I loved watching these young consultants rise to their highest potentials giving them opportunities well above their level while my male peers often squashed their potentials with meaningless tasks. As a result most of my consultants reached the level of manager often a year or more before their peers.

In 2001 I left Ernst & Young Consulting and joined Wind River Systems, a high tech firm as the Director of Business Excellence. I was hired to transform the fledgling engineering services company in San Diego into a high functioning engineering services team. I’d like to say I was as successful with this venture as I had been throughout my career, but that would be untrue. For the first time in my life, the client was near death and there was nothing I could do to save them. In fact I got sick. I caught their dis-ease. I fell into my midlife crisis. I even had a brand new red convertible SAAB announcing this midlife transition.

DESCENT TOWARDS THE GODDESS

For five long years I took the Heroine’s Journey as described by Maureen Murdock, Marion Woodman, Sylvia Brinton Perera and many others. In fact it became my full time job going to analysis twice a week and spending the rest of the week in deep contemplation. I wrote in my journal several hours a day. I spent hours analyzing my dreams, complexes, emotions, defenses and projections learning how to turn my childhood defenses into gifts, integrate my shadow and my masculine and feminine energies into a new dynamic self.

SOULFUL VOCATION

During this time on the Soul’s Journey, I completed New Ventures West’s Professional Coaching Program. James Flaherty the founder and author of Coaching to Excellence took business coaching from being primarily focused on performance improvement to developmental coaching based loosely on Ken Wilber’s All Quadrant All Levels (AQAL) model of bio-social-psycho-spiritual development. Where other professional coaching programs were focused on performance and skill building, New Ventures West focused on what it means to be a human being in this world. They believe working at the level of being leads to deep structural changes in psyche. Rather than change the behavior, they focus on the person who is behaving. This leads to transformations rather than adaptations. Yet I found this program lacking something. It did not work for me or any of my peers who were going through the depression of midlife.

In 2003 at a Spiral Dynamics Integral conference in Santa Barbara, I met a student from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Knowing how much I loved books she tempted me with Pacifica’s fabulous bookstore. The moment I set foot on the campus and entered the library of Joseph Campbell, I knew I was home. It was a mystical experience like none other. Within weeks I found myself pursuing a PhD in Depth Psychology. I had found the missing link in Ken Wilber and Don Beck’s Spiral Dynamic Integral programs and in New Ventures West’s Integral Coaching program – SOUL.

In 2005 I completed the course work to achieve a Master of Arts in Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute and launched ANIMA COACHING™.

In 2007 I completed the course work for a PhD and began my dissertation.