Science-inspired. Human-centered. Fully-alive.

You were once in love with your work.

Then something changed. The spark dimmed. It’s time to rekindle it.

Irene at her laptop on a waterfront terrace, hand at her glasses, mid-thought

There’s success on the outside. Inside, you’re not so sure.

Burnout would be easier to name. What you’re feeling is more specific. You still show up, make the hard calls, run the meetings, put out the fires. You’re good at this. But somewhere along the way the day-to-day started draining the life out of you, and the career you worked so hard for stopped feeling like yours. Maybe the ladder led somewhere you didn’t expect. Maybe the team is tangled in a drama you can’t seem to fix. Maybe you’ve spent so long being steady for everyone else that you lost track of yourself. What you want now is someone by your side as you come alive again.

About Irene.

Learn more →

Irene, mic in hand, laughing with participants at a leadership session

This is not the leadership coaching you’ve seen before.

Irene is a PhD neuroscientist who researched how the brain helps you learn and stay motivated. When she helps you rewire a pattern, she means it at the level of neural circuitry.

She is an experienced leader who has done the work. A school superintendent who doubled enrollment and tripled financial reserves. A founder who built a new university department from the ground up and ran it. A board member who has served ten institutions over twenty years — including as treasurer overseeing a $21M budget, as secretary for a brand new medical school, and as chair of two others.

And she is an award-winning educator who has spent twenty-five years making the most complex ideas in human behavior usable by the people who need them. Plenty of coaches are accomplished in one of those. All three in one person is rare.

What the titles don’t capture: since high school, Irene has been holding space for conversations that change people’s lives, helping them see themselves differently, change their patterns, and say things they’ve never said out loud to anyone. Nobody taught her that. It’s who she is.

She works with leaders driven by passion, purpose, and people

Coaching

Disney
Google
Chicago Public Schools
DoorDash
Facebook
Aspire Public Schools
Shasta County Elections Department
Community Foundation of the North State
University of Maryland
Hat Creek Construction & Materials
Shasta College
YES Charter School
Connections ABA

Training

Verizon
Blue Origin
UCSF
Boston Medical Center
California Association of Museums
Society for Human Resource Management
California Assessors Association
The Women’s Fund
University of Texas
Charter Schools Development Center
Oakland Public Library
Lick-Wilmerding High School
Association of California School Administrators

Three types of support.

Leaders at the top need a partner who can see them more clearly than they see themselves, push back when it matters, and ask the right question at the right moment. Pick the right path for you.

Irene coaching on a deck surrounded by trees

Individual Coaching

For the leader who wants a trusted guide by their side.

Individual executive coaching is for a leader ready to fundamentally change how they live and lead — and by extension, how their entire organization operates. Irene takes eight 1:1 clients at a time. Maximum. She designed it that way on purpose, so that every client receives the sustained, high-trust focus this work requires.

Thought Partnership →

A leadership team at work around a table, flip charts on the wall behind

Team Development

For teams ready to move from functional to exceptional.

Engage the entire team to produce change that lasts — when a strategic plan on a shelf isn’t enough, when the culture needs to change, or when it’s time to end the drama. Together you’ll co-create a custom program uniquely suited to your team and organization.

Team Coaching →Org Transformation →Team Retreats →Workshops →

Not sure? Start here

Women sharing a long outdoor dinner table among the redwoods

Communities to Join

For leaders who want leadership to feel less lonely.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development identified the one thing that matters most for our long term health and happiness: the quality of our relationships. So if y want work to feel like play again, if you want to come alive, find good people to do it with.

Work/Play CoLab →Heroine’s Journey Retreat →

What people are saying.

“I really do love our sessions and feel like they’re helping me get at and explore some feelings and beliefs I’ve never quite gotten to with traditional professional workshops and activities. I’m so grateful for your guidance and inquisitiveness.”

Jennifer Snider

Library Executive Director

“Working with Irene has given me myself — wonderful and powerful, flawed and unique, and complete.”

Amy Frydenlund

Director of Curriculum and Instruction

“Working with Irene was an investment in myself. If you’re willing to put yourself, your goals, and your challenges first, then working with Irene is an absolute no-brainer.”

Laurinda Willard

Chief Operating Officer, Turtle Bay Exploration Park

Read my blog.

Sometimes the best stuff is free. Read the latest articles or subscribe to receive an illustrated guide to your brain on travel.

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A stressed young man at his desk, head in his hands, in front of a laptop

October 21, 2026

The Wrong Way to Manage Anxiety

We often encounter situations in life and leadership where we have absolutely no control over an outcome that matters to us.

A wooden boomerang spinning against a clear blue sky

September 8, 2026

Pushing Back Against the Pull of Habit

Your team comes back from the offsite fired up with new learnings and connections. Three weeks later, nothing has changed.

A person working a calculator beside stacked coins and paperwork

August 3, 2026

Dear Money,

There's something so tricky about our relationship to money. After quoting my old, retired rates to a potential client, I needed to create a new relationship with Money.

Begin the conversation.

There are some conversations you forget before you’ve left the room. But others stick. They reorganize something fundamental. They impact every part of your life, becoming the before and after you point to later, when someone asks how everything changed. If something on this page made you pause, reach out.

One conversation could change your life →