After nine years in marketing for GlaxoSmithKline, I jumped into consulting with a boutique firm, where I rose to partner. I then co-founded Ascendant Consulting and focused the practice on helping large corporations enter new markets.

Soon thereafter, I created a “general contractor” model in which my role was to win engagements, ensure quality and manage relationships, while subcontracting the lion’s share of the subject-matter expert work.

That transition sparked a deep, ongoing study of how to construct and sell consulting projects for maximum value.

For the record, I received my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Carnegie Mellon. (Go plaid!) I’m a hockey fanatic and eat egregious amounts of chocolate.

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After spending the first 14 years of my risk management career in the insurance industry, I wanted to help other companies learn from my experiences — and the best way to do that at broad scale was as a consultant. And, as a fairly new mom not wanting to be on the road all the time, the best option was to start my own firm.

I successfully built and scaled my firm over the course of 10 years, helping insurance companies transform enterprise risk management from a compliance exercise to a competitive advantage. For seven of those years, I was a client of David A. Fields Consulting Group. Through that journey, I had the opportunity to help clients of all sizes across the U.S. turn desired outcomes into reality, and build a team that could deliver value to clients without me in the loop.

Since David and his team helped me build a firm where I was “relevant, but not essential,” and since I wanted to continue helping others learn from my experience, I said Yes when David invited me to become a Principal at his firm. In full transparency, it was a hard choice. Giving up my “dream business” was not easy, but helping you build yours is totally worth it.

On a personal note, I grew up in North Florida, with degrees in Accounting (University of West Florida) and Risk Management/Insurance (Florida State University). My husband, son, and I still live in North Florida, enjoying baseball and surviving the summers by swimming in the nearby cold springs.

One of the best discoveries I made as an undergraduate 20-plus years ago was the world of management consulting. My career started with two of the world’s most well-known strategy and implementation firms.

I truly began to love being a consultant when I ventured out on my own. The shift to my own firm forced me to recognize that my deep training as a “corporate” consultant needed to be reframed to thrive in a small firm.

In service to clients ranging from small businesses to large multinationals, I have traveled to (and sometimes lived in) Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. My greatest takeaway from these wide-ranging experiences is the incredible power we have as human beings to steer our destiny when given the right tools and environment.

I grew up in Southern Africa and am an Organizational Psychologist by training and choice, having studied at Columbia University. It may, therefore, come as no surprise that I love researching people and systems in my spare time. My wife, Rudo, and my son bring meaning to all my work.