If there is one industry that needs to be ahead of the curve, it would be tech. For women in this highly competitive and male-dominated industry, striving for growth can seem against all odds. Alison Arnoff is well-familiar with this, having been in a 30-year career working in tech. Now, Alison is a certified executive coach, where she is her clients’ fiercest champion and challenge as she helps them figure out what’s next. In this episode, she joins Rosie Zilinskas to talk about the unique challenges women face in the tech industry both from during her time and what she has observed today. Through it all, Alison highlights the importance of amplifying curiosity to navigate the roadblocks of career development. She also discusses intentionality in leadership and the power of choice, of taking your life back to pursue your goals and dreams. The path to growth is never without adversities, especially for women in a man’s world. Follow today’s conversation to find wisdom and inspiration to step into the next level.
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During this episode, our guest discusses her experience in the corporate world, the challenges women face in the tech industry, and the importance of curiosity and intentionality in leadership. Let me tell you a little bit about Alison. After a 30-year career in tech working for huge corporations, 7 startups, and 6 exits, Alison left to be a certified executive coach. She helps her clients figure out what’s next whether it’s a promotion, a pivot, or an increase in impact. Her mission is to be the thinking partner she wished she had when she was in the corporate world. With that, stay tuned for my conversation with Alison.
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Alison, thank you so much for being here. I’m happy to be able to have this conversation with you. I’m going to start right off the bat by asking you a question. You were in the corporate world for 30 years before you decided to leave. Did you feel that you had enough management support as you were trying to advance in your career?’
Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate the time we are spending here, and the answer was not always. It was challenging because I was often the only or the first woman in the roles I was in. There were different levels of welcome and of people that are supporting and helping you. Part of the reason probably you and I do what we do is because we want to be that resource that didn’t exist for us or wasn’t fully baked for us when we were there. Definitely, there were a lot of times when I felt isolated and alone, and didn’t have a champion in my corner.
You were in the tech world. Tell me a little bit about the racial men versus women, and maybe some things that you noticed that were different for you being a female in a male world.
It would vary from company to company. In a lot of them, I was the first woman in that role. At one point, in one of my early jobs, I was told to make sure I didn’t associate with the admins too much so people would remember what my role was. I might forget I’m a technical specialist because I was nice to the women and other women in the office. Most of the bigger companies would have a few women in them. In startups, it’s usually not, except for maybe one of the later-stage startups. Even one of my last ones had over 1,000 employees, yet I was the first woman in America in my role.
When it comes to leadership opportunities, how was it for you? I know you worked for various companies, but was the management team open to you moving into leadership opportunities? Were they broadly expressed to you that they were there? How did that work?
At the smaller companies, yes. I was brought in some of the leadership titles and building the team underneath. At the larger companies, it wasn’t talked about very much with me. There seemed to be some people that were preordained to be next. There was definitely more of a profile that they were looking for. I don’t remember at any of the larger companies having that as a conversation, or even somebody asking me, “Where do you want to go?”
There’s a quote on a post that I read that you posted about a month ago. I’m going to read the quote and I’m going to ask you to expand a little about it. It says, “As a leader, it’s easy to get caught up in the demands and pressures of the day-to-day. We become reactive and focused solely on survival, which can leave little room for growth and development. However, by amplifying our curiosity, we can become more effective leaders and unlock a whole new world of possibilities.” I thought that was key because it talks about little room for growth when you’re focused on your day-to-day and you don’t think about your career development. Then the second part is amplifying that curiosity. Tell me a little bit more about why you wrote that.
A lot of my posts are often after having experiences with my clients and lessons that I’m sharing with them, they realize that they probably have more universal appeal. For a lot of my leaders, especially in the tech industry, there is such pressure in pace because you have to be ahead of technology. You have to be ahead of the path. There’s definitely extra pressure there. Maybe there is another industry, but from my exposure, the tech industry has its own acceleration pace. You have a number of emails you’re going through, different personalities, and the things you’re judged and not judged on. I found that many of my leaders while they were seeking coaching, or we were giving a coach from their company, to get them to lean into it was hard because they were in survival mode.
How do we get them out of survival mode and get them into a place where they can pause and think about things? I’m a big fan of curiosity all around. I use the term dial a lot. I tell my clients, “You need to turn up the dial on curiosity.” As a leader, a big challenge is letting go and trusting your people. The curiosity is asking more questions and empowering your teams. A lot of people that come to me for time management don’t have a time management problem. They have a leadership problem because they are not necessarily giving their teams permission to rise and to take over, giving them the space to figure things out maybe in a different way that they would do it. Being curious and asking more questions is a part of it.
I’ve had some clients that are leaders that were struggling with their relationships with other people. Because they’re busy, they go in there, trying to solve the problem and not asking enough questions and creating space for the other people because they come in there with this acceleration pace in these meetings. By slowing down, being more curious, and asking more questions, we evaluate all aspects of our personal relationships and professional relationships. Slow it down and ask. It’s amazing how much we can learn. That allows us to do our jobs better and more efficiently if we are more curious and slow down for a minute.
Especially as a leader, you’re in between a rock and a hard spot. You have the senior leadership that you’re answering to. You have your own work to do and a team that you’re responsible for. You’re being pulled in a lot of different directions. The biggest thing now, and a lot of companies are trying to do this, is to treat the person as a human being, not just as an employee. Acknowledging me as an individual first is going to get you a lot further than completely ignoring me as an individual, and then just treating me as an employee. What you’re saying is asking questions relating to people, and then diving into the actual work and the problem that needs to be solved.
Curiosity gives you many things. You learn how people around you receive information. You learn what’s important to them and their values. When you look at them as a whole person and you understand them, then you can be more effective and efficient in how you interact with them because now you’re understanding them holistically, not just as an entity to accomplish something.
I know we already talked about a couple of challenges, but as a woman in tech for 30 years, what are some challenges that you saw that women typically encountered in that tech space, especially as you started to rise in your career?
Before I talk about myself, I’ll share the results. I interviewed 40 female executives in tech. One of the common themes was they still didn’t always feel they belonged in the room. The people who had credentials second to none. I was pretty confident but I didn’t always get heard. One of the common things is I would say the sky is blue and it’s crickets. Three people later, a guy in the room would say, “The sky is blue,” and it’s the greatest thing they ever heard.
With the interruptions and the co-opting in meetings, the women are getting talked over more. There is some science behind our voices as to why they do that, but they are still being talked over and then having your idea co-opted where you’re not landing it with your idea and somebody else is now presenting it maybe slightly differently, and taking credit for you.
Those were some of the biggest issues. I talked to the guys. When I first started as an engineer, I was hired by nine guys, and they joked around about calling me the woman quota. While they meant that jokingly, I said, “You don’t know what it took me to get here. In college, I was an athlete and an engineer. You’re not taking that seriously, and then you throw that joke out there and perpetuate something without even realizing it.” That was the biggest thing.
The other thing is I worked for a lot of good people who didn’t understand unconscious bias. It’s something we talk about now. They should have said, “Let’s listen to this idea before they let it go to the next person.” There was a lack of awareness with leadership that co-opting and interrupting were happening. They weren’t leading the meeting. A lot of the things I work with my leaders on that want to be better at that is making sure that every idea is digested and discussed before you move on, and making sure that the person responding is not ignoring what was said before them. It takes a lot of intentionality in leaders to create that, but not all are willing to do it.
I know that eventually, you ended up leaving. Was there a catalyst? Did you have enough? What was the reason why you ended up deciding to leave the corporate world after 30 years?
Ten years before I knew, there was a point when I was going to leave and my next role was going to be in service. I didn’t know what that was. First, I thought I was going to be a teacher, then a therapist, and then I learned about this coaching thing. It took me four years of research and coaching schools before I found one that aligned with me. I knew that break was going to happen. I had people say I should go on my own years before I even go coaching.” I put on my car, “I’m smart. Hire me,” so I didn’t have a focus.
In my last company, my dad passed away. I was traveling cross-country a lot. It was hard on the family and I wasn’t showing up for them. It was a good time to part ways. I could have gone on long-term disability, but I realized I was done. Ironically I said, “Maybe I’ll get one more under my belt before I do it. I get one more IPO wonder my belt.” I was interviewing for this company. I had to fly up to the Bay Area. I got violently ill on the day of the final interview. I almost ended up in the hospital. I show up and I’m like, “Maybe the world is telling me my body doesn’t want to do this anymore.”
I felt like there was a value misalignment in the sense that the roles needed to be very much about how much money you could bring in. That wasn’t my top value anymore. When I was younger, that money was important because I watched my parents watch every dollar and I didn’t want that. I want to secure my future. Once that was done, it was like, “Does this bring me joy?” I realized I wasn’t waking up excited. I was paranoid, angry, and stressed all the time. Even though I love technology, that wasn’t the way that was going to make me happy anytime soon. It was a combination of things that were not good with the last company because of what was going on with the family and my body. This was a plan all along so I’m like, “I guess I’m going to go for it now.”
It’s funny how things like that happen. You’re like, “Let me do one last IPO,” and then the universe, God, and your body say, “You’re not going that way. You’re going to go this way.” There’s that quote, “If you want a good laugh, tell God your plans,” because it won’t turn out the way you thought. You now have transitioned as an executive coach and I know you already talked about leaders. What are some things that you have noticed that when you do help your clients, it lands with them?
One of the things that’s interesting is I’m a big fan of Shirzad Chamine’s Positive Intelligence. It allows people to find their saboteurs. We all have this concept of a judge. All hard-driven people are hard on themselves, but our judge has accomplices and it could be the perfectionist, the pleaser, or the controller. There are so many avoiders. When I understand that about my clients, it allows them to see how they’re showing up and how they might be getting in their own way and not even knowing it. A lot of what you’re doing with people is already amazing and successful.
It’s about how we get them into flow and out of fight mode all the time. You have to start identifying what’s preventing the flow. Often, it could be us in our way. It could be how we’re communicating. There are different ways to communicate. I work a lot with my clients on that. It allows them to look at things differently when they understand how they may need to show up differently and communicate differently, and take ownership that they control so much more than they realize. They’re impacting so much more than they realize. In one of my testimonials, a client said, “You taught me not only how to be a better leader but a better husband and a better father.”
It wasn’t about them learning about their big one about curiosity but being more curious and understanding which saboteur would maybe prevent them from getting to where they wanted to get to, and understanding there’s some energy in how they were showing up. All we do as coaches is give them an invitation to a broader perspective and to see what they can’t see. They’re already amazing. We’re not telling them how to be great leaders. We’re making the window of perspective much bigger so that they have more tools and more awareness so they can show up more powerfully.
For those who may be wondering, “What is she talking about when she means flow?” Could you maybe explain a little bit about how you interpret the term flow?
If you guys have ever tried to start running, the first time you start running, you feel like you weigh 1 million pounds and it’s hard. Eventually, you keep doing it and you feel like you’re flying. Work can be like that. When you fight a lot, dress all the time, and always feel behind, everything seems like it takes so much effort and thought to do things. What we want to get to is flow. It doesn’t mean we’re any less busy. It means that we feel like we have the mental, mindset, and the skillset for it. We’re able to apply them. We’re able to not be mentally sabotaging things and you are busy, but if it feels like it’s easier and you’re not dragging that anchor on your ankles anymore that makes everything harder.
It’s having more tools and awareness. What’s funny is when I talk to especially a lot of my women leaders about getting out of fighting into flow, they’re like, “Yes, that’s what I want. I want to not feel like I’m always going upstream with everything.” Some of them are the challenges of being a woman in a male-dominated field, and others are the skillsets they might want to develop so that they can be more effective and efficient in the work they’re doing.
I always picture flow like when I’m working on something that I’m focused and everything is working the way I wanted it to work, and the hours melt away where you’re like, “It’s been like two hours and I haven’t gotten up.” That’s fun when I’m creating and utilizing my time. How do they say it? “When I’m controlling the calendar and the calendar is not controlling me.” It’s a big shift there.
The other thing about being in flow is that when things happen, it doesn’t throw you so far. For example, when I’m not in flow, I call it the magnetic tornado. I start spinning and then I pull everything in my life into that tornado and make everything bigger when I’m in fight mode. When I’m in flow mode, it’s like, “This is a hiccup. What do I need to do to move past it and move on?” It’s not that things don’t happen when you’re in flow. It’s the reaction to it and the magnitude that you put to it. There’s a great saying, “Just because it means something doesn’t mean it means everything.” Do not get into that spiral when you’re flow is challenged.
“It's not that things don't happen when you're in flow; it's the reaction to it and the magnitude that you put to it.” – Alison Arnoff Click To Tweet
I was reading a little bit about you that you were a kid from Chicago. You had a lot of boys around you and even when you were young when you had all those boys around you, you felt like they didn’t want you there. It seems like there’s this theme in your life.
Not my social life. It was more in certain situations. My fifth-grade Math teacher called my mom to complain that the boys didn’t like that I raised my hand first in Math class. Those are the kinds of things. My mom didn’t tell me until I turned 50. I learned that not too long ago. Going back to the time that was different, a woman wasn’t supposed to be smarter than the guys and raise their hand first. Ironically, that was one of my favorite teachers that I learned the most from. Fortunately, I have a mom who told him, “If she’s in the advanced class, there’s nothing I can tell you to do. I’m not going to tell my daughter not to raise her hand first.”
For the most part, my relationships with people as an engineering student were more like the teachers might not have taken me seriously. With my peers, it was always in school like in college, I was an engineer. I studied with all the guys. That was pretty good. There were those moments when you’d have a teacher or somebody who didn’t want to see you as a capable individual. They just saw you’re a woman.
If I think of that one teacher who called your mom to say, “Alison is racing her hands before the other boys,” I’m like, “What kind of common sense does a teacher have to say, ‘You shouldn’t be raising your hand because you’re a girl.’” The work that you and I do is important because I feel that it’s such a perfect time to be a younger female coming up in the workforce because there are so many people collectively both male and female, but they’re many female leaders from all walks of life. I feel like we’re all pushing collectively together for the first time in history, where we all want to make the path of those women coming up behind us a little bit easier. I sure as heck hope that things like that don’t happen anymore in this day and age. Shifting a little bit about your story. You had a near-death survivor story. Tell me a little bit about that.
When I turned 40, they noticed a little regurgitation in my heart. I was born with an irregular heart valve. It was discovered when I was 40. I was being checked every year. They said, “At some point in life you might have to have surgery, but it probably won’t be until maybe late 70s or 80s because you’re healthy.” In August 2019, in my annual checkup, I got the check, “You’re good. See you in a year. There won’t be an issue for 20 years,” then somehow a few months later on a bike ride, I started having some chest pain. They thought maybe because I’m asthmatic it was asthma. It was all during the pandemic. They’re like, “There’s something else wrong,” and they realized that six months after my last appointment that valve had started failing.
They had to give surgery. There were some complications during the surgery partially probably because I’m asthmatic. My heart and asthma might have been fighting each other. They had to put me in suspended animation in a coma-like state for six days. I was on a device. I had a 20% to 40% chance of making it. I was kept on that device. It was crazy because I was hallucinating for six days. I’ve been in and out of the hospital for months. I also had to learn to walk again. The device that kept me alive was in my groin and it compressed all the nerves in my right foot. I had a dead right foot and I had to do that.
I had complications. I had all this stuff back in the hospital a few times. I had to rebuild my life from scratch. It was all during the pandemic. It was a little nuts. I’m lucky to be here and beat the odds. Also, taking my life back and living it the way I’m living it now. I’m a big believer in the power of choice and I made the choice to take my life back. I didn’t know what that was going to look like.
I’m lucky. I have an amazing man in my life who helped me through it. He didn’t let me give up between the two of us, but I wanted my life back. I had to shut down my whole business beforehand because in case the worst case, I didn’t want anybody to have to do with how I paid clients back and everything. I literally had to shut down for almost a year my business, and then had to restart it again.
Kudos to you first of all for going through that traumatic experience of near death, and then having to rebuild not only your body but your whole life because you had to shut down your business. That choice is such a huge decision for someone to be like, “This is not going to beat me. I’m going to take my life back,” and look where you are now. You’re healthy and beautiful. Your business is back. It’s incredible. I don’t know if it’s willpower but as you say, that power of choice is incredible. Kudos to you for being able to do that. I’m a little curious about your hallucinations. Do you remember anything that happened in your hallucinations?
Yes. I was stuck in a simulation. I tried to describe it because someone asked me the other day. Imagine this electronics simulation where we’re all like pawns from a chess set, and we’d be collapsed, shot through it, and up again. It was awful.” I remember coming out of it and finding out later, that they stuck my partner in for ten minutes to talk to me while I was unconscious. That’s when I came out of it. He was there and then when he had to go, I started screaming because I knew I would go back into the hallucination.
When I was awake, I couldn’t see the room. I had some visual issues when I first woke up. I thought I was in this giant stadium. I thought nurses were on the side of the walls, laughing at me. I saw the entire wall of my room start pulsing like in a horror movie. It was pretty crazy and all the stuff. You’re alone because of COVID.
That’s the worst part.
On the first night, one of the nurses held my hand all night because all I kept saying was, “I’m scared.” It was pretty bad with all the hallucinations because you know you’re in them and you can’t do anything about it. You’re trapped. It was pretty crazy.
There is the power of choice to take your life back. Kudos to you for being able to do all that. A couple of questions as far as your business is concerned. What do you have going on in your business? Do you have any new projects that you’re working on or anything like that?
I’m excited. By the time this goes live, it will be live. One of the things you start looking at is, “What do people keep coming to me for?” The two things that they started coming to me for are similar. It’s like, “I feel like this part of my journey is done and I wanted to do something else. I’m not ready to stop working, so it’s a pivot.” The other one that kept showing up more with promotion, “How do I get to the next level?”
I started evaluating things on what we were working on and the things were working on. There seem to be a lot of recurring themes. It also made me realize that a lot of people don’t understand the multiple facets involved with getting a promotion, especially from VP to EVP or to the C-level. We need to help create that awareness. I now have the executive promotion readiness assessment and it’s a series of questions where it’s like, “Check. I’ve done this. This, I haven’t.” It allows people to start looking at the breadth of things they should be looking at to start preparing for promotion whether it’s for 2024 or even 2025.
We all know that person that life works for. They’re like that perfect prototype. Their path is going to show up for them. The rest will have to be more intentional about it and put some work into it. It’s a free assessment. They can download it. They also are gifted to the people until it gets out of control. You can get a 45-minute free assessment review. We’ll come up with a plan so you can start looking at where to get started. Even if you have a lot of them checked, to make it easier, I’m not doing a 1 to 5 or 1 to 10 scale, but even probably the things you could be doing a little deeper, broader, and wider.
It’s not just about skillset but mindset, motivation, and visibility. These are the main areas that we will focus on. It’s about 20 to 30 questions that you answer, then you can start looking at where you need to start putting your energy so that when they start looking for people, they know. One of them, which you know and you talked about it in your keynote is to make sure you ask. We can’t assume that they know what we want. One of the questions in there is, “I have clearly articulated my desire to be promoted.”
I have a newsletter on LinkedIn called Choose What’s Next. The last one was about just asking. How many people don’t ask? You can’t expect people to read your mind. By not asking, you are putting your future in somebody else’s hands and you are not owning your path forward. You are trusting that somebody else knows what you want. A big part of having the future you want is creating it for yourself.
“You can't expect people to read your mind. By not asking, you are putting your future in somebody else's hands and you are not owning your path forward.” – Alison Arnoff Click To Tweet
Part of my story is that I was 40 years old, waiting for people to notice my hard work, and nobody ever came. It wasn’t until I finally said, “I’m interested in moving up to a management position.” That’s when things started happening. I was like, “How I did not ask?” That goes back to 32 years ago when I started my career. First of all, coaching was not as prevalent. We didn’t have the whole, “We need to get a mentor, sponsor, and advocate,” as it is nowadays.
I also went through a bad divorce. I halted my ability to focus on my career. That was another added value there. I should say non-value. I’m glad you have your quiz because one of the other things that I’ve noticed and I have a quiz too, but mine is much more simple. Mine differentiates people on whether they feel that they’re deserving and worthy to get that career, utilizing the growth mindset, and then the third is where the majority of people are falling into. They don’t have a corporate roadmap. They don’t have their goals written down, their core values, mission or vision, and things like that where out of everything that you’re trying to do to get promoted, whether it’s a plan like the one that you do or some kind of roadmap, it is so important for us to be intentional with our careers.
I’m glad we’re having this conversation because so many women don’t ask for what they want, or they tell one person, then they expect that one person to be able to help them. You need to go talk to as many leaders and the organization as you can so that they know, and then they can be your advocate. You can keep your name on top of their mind and say, “Alison or Rosie is interested,” or whatever.
I’d love to add to what you said about value. The value is the core of all the work I do. In every first session with a client, we’re creating a detailed value map because you and I both might have a value of integrity. What it means to me would be different. Values are important because when you live life in alignment with your values, it works. When it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Often when something is irritating, frustrating, or challenging you, it is because of value that is being challenged. Yet many of us think we know our values. Until we sit down and understand them, it is important. I have a value of freedom.
I’m a big adventure traveler. I have friends all over the place. I can work from anywhere. Freedom is important to me. What it means to me is that I can work from anywhere. Freedom means for you might be something else. It could be financial freedom. Unless we understand what our values are and look at how we are currently living into them today, then we can’t take action from them. The other thing about values is when we were talking about looking at people as whole people, there was often a misperception that your personal and professional values can’t coexist.
In coaching we try to find the and instead of the the or like, “What if they could? What would that look like?” I know my career shifted when I stopped trying to be a different person inside and outside work. I was Alison. That alignment helped me so much more. Values are too important. The most overused word I use is intentional but you need to be intentional but understanding them, doing the work, knowing what they mean, and paying attention to them at any time. I call out on something and she’s like, “You’re focused on your first three values that you’re doing these other ones and it is showing you out of whack.” It was like, “Right.” I have gotten into the or-mode instead of the and-mode. Values are more powerful than people realize.
One of my values is fulfillment. I am fulfilled when I have conversations like this with you and when I’m working on helping women advance their careers. That is what lights me up. That’s what fills my bucket up. Fulfillment is one of my core values for sure. We had a great conversation. Are there maybe two tips that you can leave the audience with so that they can know how to implement some of the conversations that we’ve been having?
There are two things that come up a lot with my clients. We talked a lot about choices and intentional choices. If you think about it, when you get up in the morning, by the time you’ve made your coffee, you might have already made twenty choices. Some are by habit and some are by expectations. Start looking at the choices you’re making in your life, or the choices that are being made for you, and think about the power of choice, “I chose to take my life back.” That’s powerful, and when you make these choices, you don’t have to know the path to be committed to them. Commit to the choice. Don’t worry that you don’t know what that means or how you’re going to figure it out, but just make that choice, then the path will start showing up.
“Just make that choice and then the path will start showing up.” – Alison Arnoff Click To Tweet
Start to think about taking control of the choices. The second thing that is big, and I’m having an eBook coming out about this in a few moths, is about permission. I notice that so many of my leaders or potential leaders are not giving themselves permission to show up. They’re waiting for somebody else’s approval or validation before they step forward in that role. They step forward in the power before they speak in the meeting or they take a chance, they’re looking for somebody else to give them permission. I would think about in your life, where are you waiting for permission? It was a common theme happening for my clients and then it got me to look at my life in areas where I was still waiting for somebody else’s permission. Intentional choices and permission, those two acts alone can be a game-changer in moving you forward.
Those are powerful, especially the permission one when you said, “Where are you waiting for permission to do whatever.” That is extremely powerful. Alison, thank you so much for your time and for all of the teachings that you have shared with us. Any final words that you want to leave our audience with?
Remember that you deserve a place in the room and your voice deserves to be heard. You’ve earned the place there and take it.
Alison, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you.
Thank you for having me.
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I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. The key takeaways for me are Alison’s two tips. They are great. The first one is to make intentional choices. She emphasizes the power of choice and encourages us to be mindful of the choices that we make every day in our lives. She says that by committing to intentional choices, even without knowing the exact path, we will take control of our lives and allow the path to unfold naturally.
Tip number two is we have to give ourselves permission. She highlights the importance of us not waiting for external validation or approval to take the next step of whatever it is that we’re trying to do. Alison highlights the fact that we need to stop waiting for that permission in order to pursue our goals and our dreams. Great tips. I hope you enjoyed the conversation.
A couple of reminders, if you haven’t taken my free quiz on how you may be sabotaging yourself in your career, take the free quiz. Finally, I wanted to announce that I will be launching a mastermind for professional women who want to be seen and heard at work. If you want to obtain a promotion to increase your income, feel recognized, and finally feel fulfilled at work, then this program is for you. You can reach out to me on my website, which is NoWomanLeftBehind.com. I’m excited to invite you to explore. This program is for you because this will be what you need to get ahead in your career. With that, remember to be brave, be bold, and take action.
After a 30-year career in tech working for huge corporations and 7 startups resulting in 6 exits, Alison left to be a certified executive coach. She helps her clients figure out What’s Next, whether it is promotion, pivot, or increased impact. Her mission is to be the thinking partner she wished she had in her corporate career. She is her clients’ fiercest champion and challenge. Alison’s extraordinary life as a woman in tech, shark diver, near-death survivor, Division 1 athlete, and solo backpacker gives her a unique perspective in service to her clients.
