07/14/2026
When I left my job 7 years ago to start my own business, I had no idea what I was getting into and I had no idea where it would lead.
After sixteen years leading a gender equality department and pouring myself into policy, diplomacy, governance, and public education I couldn't ignore a calling. In my imagination it was coaching, supporting human rights and environmental leaders to stretch, adapt, and grow in ways that helped them be more present, effective, and skillful.
I considered this work to be "deeper", in the way that it would address the challenges, fears, and longings of the interior life.
But as I began coaching, I also started reading more vigorously in areas that challenged me and made me come alive. I also started a serious Zen practice with my teacher Diane Musho Hamilton. Building on my love of philosophy, embodiment, systems change and spirituality, I took to eco-philosophy, post-humanism and post-activism.
What I didn't realize is that the ideas I encountered would challenge the very notion of how I approached coaching entirely.
What is a 'self'? What is expertise? Mastery? Self-efficacy? What is it that we 'will'? How do we relate to the arc of time, a career? The concept of influence?
Post-humanism has decentered the 'self' for me, in addition to the concept of 'leader'. It is not that we don't have a self (it is important to have a grounded ego after all), but the self is constantly selfing, changing- and often not because of what or why we intend. Further, I like to flip the idea of leading and wonder what is leading us?
Dancing with fluidity, polarities, the wisdom of the body, the unseen and the more-than-human world as systems continue to evolve has been a key theme in my practice.
Further, I would have never anticipated that I'd start a podcast with thinkers I deeply admire or begin my own book-writing project.
All this to say, that while "spark coaching" kicked off this adventure, named by my then six year old daughter who saw a "spark" in me...I am now simply returning to my name here as a way of embracing my own evolution, thinking and practice.
A long winded way to say....my handle here has changed! ❤️
Photo: Margaret England
