Why I Coach
My Story of Neurodivergence and Leadership
It all started in Saint Paul, Minnesota, 1980...
That’s me, the youngest, absorbing everything from the sidelines. My parents were immigrants, building a life from the ground up. Our home was humble, but the questions were big. How do you build a life from scratch? What does it take to adapt? These early observations shaped how I work today: with curiosity, clarity, and deep respect for the quiet grit people carry.
Accomplished and still struggling
Growing up as a first-generation Chinese-Vietnamese American girl in Minnesota meant constantly walking the tightrope between cultures. At school, I got straight A’s—but I also got comments like “talks too much,” “can’t sit still,” or “needs to work on self-control.” My report cards sparkled in academics but sagged in the social-emotional column.
At home, my parents—like many immigrants doing their absolute best—believed ADHD was a Western label for bad behavior or, worse, a kind of mental illness no one should talk about. Mental health wasn’t in their parenting framework. They emphasized productivity, respect, and achievement. If you were smart, you were expected to act like it. No excuses. No mess.
I learned to mask the chaos inside with high grades and polished resumes. I excelled not because it was easy—but because I had no other choice. There was no language for executive dysfunction or emotional dysregulation in our house. Just “try harder.”
When transitions unravel systems
But transitioning into college at Brown University—and later, business school—was a different story. Brown’s open curriculum eventually helped me flourish; I had the freedom to follow my curiosity and lean into the topics that lit me up. But in the beginning, I struggled. For the first time, I was in a completely unstructured environment, without the clear expectations or external scaffolding I’d unconsciously relied on. I was suddenly responsible for designing everything myself—and it was overwhelming.
I went to business school to sharpen my strategic and operational skills so I could lead with both purpose and precision—but when I chose Harvard Business School, it was also because of the case-based method; I couldn’t imagine sitting through a traditional lecture-based program. Still, my first semester was disillusioning. The program felt overly regimented and conformist. I sat in the same windowless classroom, in the same seat, with the same 90 people, for every class. I felt boxed in, unmotivated, restless, depressed, and disconnected. And for the first time, I had to confront what I’d spent years working around: my neurodivergence.
What made the difference was that Harvard worked with me. Once I named what I needed, I was able to start reshaping the experience around my brain. I found ways to participate that honored how I process information and established supports to set myself up for success. That shift changed everything.
What I know now is that transitions expose the cracks that old structures once covered. Each shift in life—whether academic, personal, or professional—meant I had to completely redesign how I organized my time, energy, and focus. No autopilot. No template. Just me, trying to rebuild from the ground up, every time life changed.
From coping to clarity
At work, I’d always been able to mold the environment—choose mission-driven roles, build systems that worked for my brain, and lead in ways that played to my strengths. My passion pulled me through the pressure. The impact was tangible. I could see how my work changed real lives, and that made everything click.
It took me decades to realize that being high-achieving and neurodivergent aren’t opposites. And even longer to understand that support isn’t a weakness—it’s a right. That realization hit me after years of white-knuckling my way through leadership roles, parenting challenges, and transitions that kept forcing me to rebuild from scratch. I started noticing patterns—not just in myself, but in my clients, colleagues, and fellow leaders. Brilliant, mission-driven people were burning out not because they couldn’t do the job, but because the systems weren’t designed for the way their brains worked.
Executive coaching became the natural next step. It brings together everything I’ve spent my career doing: strategy, leadership, systems-building, and real talk. Now, I get to help others do what I finally gave myself permission to do—stop masking, build what works, and thrive on their terms.
