"Deborah Get's it!"

Most of us spend our careers trying to manage around fear instead of moving through it. We overthink to avoid making the wrong decision. We overwork to prove we belong. We avoid difficult conversations because we might not handle them perfectly.

But here's what I've discovered: Fear isn't the enemy of good leadership. Fear that's driving your decisions unconsciously - that's the problem.

When you learn to recognize fear-based patterns and make conscious choices about how to respond to them, everything shifts. Your confidence stops depending on everything going perfectly. Your influence grows because you're not managing your own anxiety in every interaction. You make decisions faster because you trust your judgment.

As a certified fear mastery coach, I don't help you eliminate fear—that's impossible. I help you develop the internal resources to move through it, again and again.

This is what I call Grounded Leadership™—helping you move through fear, not away from it. Because every leadership breakthrough requires stepping into territory that feels uncertain, and the leaders who thrive are the ones who've learned to trust themselves in that space.

Because every leadership breakthrough requires stepping into territory that feels uncertain, and the leaders who thrive are the ones who've learned to trust themselves in that space.

What I've learned about fear (and why it matters for your leadership).

The work that matters most.

I don't hand you personality assessments to explain why you are the way you are. I don't give you a system to follow or ask you to journal about your childhood.

Instead, we focus on what's happening right now. What patterns are keeping you stuck? What would change if you trusted your instincts as much as your analysis? What becomes possible when you stop managing fear and start leading through it?

My approach blends fear mastery coaching, practical behavioral change techniques, and the kind of real-time problem-solving that actually works in your world. But honestly, the frameworks matter less than what actually happens: You start seeing your patterns clearly. You build the courage to make different choices. You develop the internal foundation that supports whatever you're trying to create.

Clients describe the work as both grounding and catalytic. Conversations that feel immediately helpful and transformative over time.

I witness the leader and the life you say you want—and hold you accountable for achieving it.

We work together either one-on-one in strategic intervention coaching or in the Grounded Leadership™ Group, where professionals build emotional leadership skills in a community setting.

What actually happens when we work together

There's a moment when you stop blaming circumstances and start telling the truth.

Mine sounded like this: "My way isn't working."

Not "I had bad luck." Not "They didn't understand me." Just the simple, devastating fact that the way I'd been living had led me exactly here.

So I made a choice. No more drinking. No more dishonest shortcuts. No more pretending everything was fine. I rebuilt from the ground up.

And then something unexpected happened. I got hired at TIAA-CREF and kept getting promoted. I was in rooms I never imagined I'd be in—working with the president, the chairman, the board.

I noticed something surprising: the executives were just as scared as I had been. The guy chairing a multimillion-dollar board meeting? Terrified of a conversation with his own daughter. The woman leading a national initiative? Convinced she'd be "found out" any day.

Their titles were impressive. Their fear was identical to mine.

Around that same time, I started volunteering at Streetwork—a program for homeless and runaway youth in Times Square.

I watched teenagers choose the street over safety, chaos over help. At first I didn't understand. Then it clicked: they weren't being irrational. They were terrified. The street was painful, but it was what they could control.

And suddenly I saw it everywhere—in them, in the executives, in myself:

Fear, when unexamined, drives our decisions. It doesn't care about your title or your tax bracket. It just runs the show until you learn how to work with it.

That insight changed everything. Within a few years, I was handpicked by the Chairman of a Fortune 100 company to direct their executive coaching programs—not because I had all the answers, but because I'd learned to navigate uncertainty without letting fear run the show.

And that's when everything changed. 

By my twenties, I'd made it to Wall Street. Mitsui. EF Hutton, Prudential.  An apartment in the Village. Money in my pocket for the first time in my life.

On paper, I was winning. I was smart, likeable, full of potential. I earned recognition, got promoted, built the kind of resume that opens doors.

But underneath? I was drinking too much, showing up late, coasting on charm instead of building something real. I missed a promotion because I didn't realize the lunch was an interview. I made choices that cost me jobs I was qualified for.

Eventually, I got fired for a mistake I couldn't talk my way out of.

Standing in the wreckage of that, I finally saw it clearly: I wasn't bad. I was scared. And I had no idea how to deal with my fear.

Here's how I learned what actually matters