about megan

I always knew I wanted to run a nonprofit. The calling was specific too: open space preservation, social justice, civic leadership. So when I became Executive Director of Green Foothills, it felt less like a job and more like arriving somewhere I'd been heading my whole life.

Over the next decade, our team accomplished more than I could have imagined. Protecting Coyote Valley in south San Jose, securing policy changes for more than 7,400 acres of open space and farmland, among a whole host of other land conservation wins across the Peninsula and South Bay. We launched a equity-centered bilingual Leadership Program that's since graduated 300+ changemakers. We secured over $300K to support tribal sovereignty and Native-led initiatives, and built a healing-focused outings program meant to bring people back into relationship with land and each other. We grew the team, deepened our partnerships, expanded our impact across the region, grew fundraising substantially, and built the organization's first endowment.

For most of my life, I believed my value came from being strong and having all the answers. Paired with an ADHD diagnosis I wouldn't get for years, that meant I was great at coming up with big ideas and not always great at the details, or at trusting my team to handle what I hadn't personally solved first. My wake-up call came when a staff member told me I was creating a culture where everything felt like it was on fire. Soon after, Chairman Valentin Lopez of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band told me something that fundamentally changed my approach: Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike need to focus on their healing, healing our relationships with ourselves, with each other, and with the earth. Paired together, I started to become a more conscious leader.

When I left Green Foothills, I knew I wanted to be part of the solution for leaders like you in the nonprofit and public sectors.

What I've noticed since, across boardrooms, coaching sessions, and the work I used to do protecting land, is that stressed people stress each other out, and stressed people and organizations are hurting the planet. It shows up as your inner critic, the friction with a colleague, and the slow organizational drift toward decisions that serve urgency over mission. Presence is a leadership practice. I believe it is how we heal ourselves and each other.

That's the work now: coaching, consulting, facilitation, and mediation, all aimed at the same root issue, helping people find more peace. I write about it too, my blog has a bunch on what I believe it looks like to lead with more presence and less self-sabotage, because the questions that show up in my client work tend to be the same ones most of us are quietly carrying.

I work with nonprofit executive directors, public agency leaders, boards, and other changemakers who want support, whether that looks like a thought partner for the decisions piling up, a coach for the patterns keeping you stuck, steady hands through a leadership transition, a facilitator who can get your board and staff back in real conversation with each other, or a mediator when a conflict has gotten too stuck for either side to untangle alone.

My hope is for you to lead with more ease, connection, aliveness, and fierce courage, and actually get to enjoy the work that called you here in the first place.

If that's where you are, let's talk.