Services

I aim to empower individuals in intellectual professions succeed. In the past, I have worked with:

• undergrad students who are aiming for grad school (academic coaching)

• grad students (dissertation and career coaching)

• faculty (career and leadership coaching)

• individuals in other intellectual professions (productivity coaching)

While these people face some similar challenges (including a lot of pressure in a highly competitive profession), each individual has a unique set of strengths and is in a unique situation.

We typically start with questionnaires and/or an interview, to check what type of consulting and coaching is more appropriate, and whether I am the best person to provide it. If so, after identifying the most salient strengths and weaknesses of the client, as well as their goals, we define a short-term (4-week) program that is adapted to the client's individual needs.

Very often, this first includes swift behavioral changes to increase productivity, and decrease procrastination and anxiety. In some cases, this is a crucial first step to ease tension and gain self-confidence needed to implement broader changes, that involve leaning into one's greatest relative strengths. One important insight is that you cannot will yourself to be more productive just by thinking about it -- this is not how the mind works. The fact is that your mind lives in the reality that your brain constructed -- so if you want to live a different reality, you need to rewire your brain little by little -- and that will be as slow as building muscle or losing weight. You need lots of practice and lots of tweaking!

Throughout the process, I help the client learn to draw from the best evidence research has to offer. For instance, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques are most relevant for reducing feelings of guilt and depression, whereas a "Giving Voice to Values" approach is most effective for ethical conflicts in the workplace.