Before my time in corporate America, I served as an immigrant community organizer for Global Cleveland, a non-profit located in downtown Cleveland. There I had the pleasure of meeting and working under former Cleveland City Council Member, Joe Cimperman. He thought highly of immigrants and their power to positively affect the communities they lived in.

Because of Joe, I understand my family’s decision to move to America as entrepreneurial. What Joe characterized as “entrepreneurial spirit” was a familial quality I always sought to imitate. I was born in Brooklyn, NY to Jamaican parents. To me, Jamaicans, like other immigrants, represented hard work, grit, and determination.

The values of legacy, success, giving, learning, honesty led me to graduate from Georgetown University, and work for top brands like Salesforce and Google. Throughout my career, I believed I had to ‘burn the boats:’ forgo happiness and fun, and accept high stress as a normal state of being. Change was necessary.

I eventually explored coaching as a way to change my behaviors and realign with what I wanted out of life. I had to do the work. When I experienced coaching for the first time, and started reading about personal development, I knew I had to become a certified coach myself.