My last 7 years:

In November, 2017 I left the US to move to the South of France to work on a book and to build a kinder, more satisfying life for myself. I had one suitcase and one question: “What can my next contribution be in the world?” I gave myself one year to answer this question. It took seven. Not because the answer was difficult to find, but because it took me seven years to grow into the person who was capable of fully stepping into the larger question of “What am I here to do?” and the questions that followed: “Who do I need to be in order to do this?” and “How do I become this person?”

I left the US because I couldn’t figure out how to create alignment in heart, body, spirit, and mind in such an intensely driven. commercialized environment. Agricultural France and all of the people and experiences I’ve had on this journey supported me in grounding into a more holistic reality and bringing my life into full integrity and authenticity. The outcome of all that I’ve learned I call 5D Architecture: How to be the architect of your true life of passion and purpose. The book (which will be published in 2025) is called Midlife Redesign: How to Live by Your Own Authority.

How I grew:

I come from a large, close family and neighborhood. My parents were both self-employed, and our household was a bustling hub of activity and creative energy with collaborators and assistants and extended family and friends often at the dinner table. My father also worked for National Geographic, but part-time so that he could be present at least some of the time for his family. Being a child of a National Geographic photographer was like having an All Access VIP Pass to a world that was open and waiting to be discovered. Travel and discovery was a priority in our lives, and continues to be so in mine. This childhood taught me that the only barriers between us and what we want are the barriers that we create for ourselves. From my father I learned that if your heart was open and if you are honest and trustworthy, people will sense that and will open their doors and hearts to you. When he died young in an accident, I took from that that a life well lived is a life lived with passion and purpose. From my mother I learned that in each of us there is a gift that needs to be shared with the world. A private caterer, her gift was making gorgeous food and creating experiences which engendered deep and lasting bonds among humans.  

Who I have worked with: 

2023-2024 BrainStore

At a conference in Switzerland I had the good fortune to meet Markus Mettler and Florence Croizier of BrainStore, and was immediately taken with the elegance and joyfulness of their approach to Getting Shit Done. BrainStore is an international network of innovation entrepreneurs, founded in Switzerland in 1997; the BrainStore team has led more than 1,000 innovation- and change-projects in over 20 countries. These projects, whether big or small, for an individual or a multinational entity are treated with equal seriousness and a consistent approach that leverages the sophisticated tools they have developed to liberate the best ideas that people didn’t even know they had. At BrainStore I have been learning about flattened hierarchies and co-creation, and how consistent process contributes to scalability. And I have been having a great time doing it.

BrainStore applies the avant-garde Pay-What-You-Wish business model. After receiving the results, customers think about their value and set a price. There is no minimum and the sky is the limit. This has taught me both how to ensure value for clients and how to see the value in it myself.

2018-2020, Edinburgh, Vision Consulting

I was introduced to the change management group Vision Consulting by my mentor Chauncey Bell because he said they had the answers to my questions about how to effect change within complex bureaucracies, and how to produce mega projects to schedule (or better) at reduced cost. The two and a half years working with Vision taught me more things than I can list here, both about myself and how and why things get done. Vision taught me the skill of Commitment-based Management (CBM) and introduced me to a whole new philosophy of communication and engagement. Their human and heart-centric approach to change led me to coaching, and taught me that communication is everything. The people of Vision are in constant, accelerated growth through the challenges of their projects. They taught me to be a good teammate, and also that “going native” and over empathizing with your client undermines your ability to help them. They also introduced me to Fernando Flores and Pluralistic Networks who developed their IP, under whom I have had the privilege of studying and learning about communication, language, and mobilizing complex projects in a changing world.

2017, New Orleans, Philanthropy

Working with a consortium of six national and local philanthropic entities who had joined together to leverage their investments in order to holistically address and shift the root causes of the biggest challenges facing the citizens of New Orleans was a study in manifesting good intentions into reality. This consortium taught me definitively that if you want to change something, you first have to become part of it. Only after trust is built and interests are aligned do things start to shift. 

2015-2016, New Orleans, Office of the Mayor, City of New Orleans

An eye-opening, disappointing, exhilirating, and somewhat soul-crushing experience, working in local government and within the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans cured me of some of my naïveté. Having worked within companies of my own creation most of my life, I got a chance to learn from the inside what bureaucracy creates for people, good, bad, and ugly. I learnt how to get things done despite blockers, and also that sometimes going around things or people to get stuff done is not always a great idea. I learned (too late) that the real job is confronting and shifting the blocker. 

2014-2015, Tamil Nadu, The Venerable Pannavati and the Treasure Human Life Foundation

Thanks to some good karma I met Venerable and joined an initiative of hers to support and project manage work she was doing with, and at the invitation of, the untouchable populations in four villages near Tiruvannamalai, southern India. What started out as a question of access to potable water grew into the building of wells and a permaculture garden, the design of a school, educational programs, shifting crops to more resilient and nutritive types of plants, and entrepreneurial support for local women. None of this would have been possible without the trust that Venerable had built within this region through bearing witness to things exactly as they are, and to supporting individuals and groups by actively hearing and seeing them. In these villages I learned that the first step to solving wicked problems is not efforting. It is to sink into the problem to witness it and learn from it. 

2013-2014, Amsterdam, THNK

By invitation, in 2013 I joined an innovative think tank for solving urban challenges. An interesting hybrid model funded initially by the City of Amsterdam and industry (Siemens, Cisco, etc.). THNK at that time recruited notable fellows with relevant skills sets internationally, and in return for their ideas and collaborative efforts to envision and create new ways of thinking around existing problems, took them through a creative leadership development program. While at THNK I worked on challenges regarding smart cities technology, the potential of 4G to create deeper links within communities, the applications of big data, and urban transport. What I learned at THNK was to open my mind to all that COULD be. I also learned the importance of body language and how to show up, and also what it looks like to be a good team member. 

1997-1999, London, Fulcrum Consulting 

The best education as a designer I could have wished for came through being the sole architect in an office of 45 engineers focused on building science.  Fulcrum, a boutique building services consultancy specialized in zero energy buildings, gave me a view into the interconnectedness of all things in the realm of building, the complexity of building dynamics and systems design, and what pure, clean design could look and feel like. They also cajoled, nudged, and nourished me as a young, aspiring green architect and gave me wings. Fulcrum and some of its partners were also my first clients when I started my architectural firm RTii. The company I would later create, FutureProof, was inspired by my experience at, and regard for, Fulcrum Engineering and the incredibly smart, dedicated, and kind people I met there and had the privilege to work amongst. 

Where I lived and what impact it had:

Growing up in Washington, D.C. I was surrounded by (and babysat for!) many civil servants and people at think tanks, international organizations, and the foreign service. This taught me that many talented, smart, and dedicated people choose public service over high incomes in the private sector, and that you can’t judge a person’s contribution to society by how much money they earn. 

I moved to New Orleans at age 17 to kickstart my adult life. This beautiful and complicated city gave me so many gifts, including being my home base for 30 years. During those years I lived other places as well: London as an architecture student and later as a young architect. Amsterdam as a green architect and again later with THNK. Kulusuk, Greenland as a wife, adventurer, filmmaker, and environmental scientist. 

New Orleans taught me the importance of place in cultural heritage, and why we humans cling to sometimes impossible landscapes. London taught me what the world of the future will look like, the incredibly rich mix that is created when the social and physical barriers that separate us start to crumble. Kulusuk taught me that life, human and ecosystemic, is fragile and unpredictable. It also taught me that we each have to own our own responsibility for what is created by us and for us.

Leaving New Orleans was necessary to start a new chapter, which led me to my current life based out of the South of France with a smaller footprint in Washington, D.C. This shift gave me the space to reintegrate some important elements of my life that had been suppressed, such as writing and physical adventuring. And also to build new competencies, such as improved communication skills, coaching, and the French language. Living in France has taught me to slow down and connect authentically with my environment. 

Leaving New Orleans also reconnected me with work opportunities in Europe and elsewhere. Two years in Edinburgh consulting for Scottish Water taught me how to create and support transformational leadership within complex bureaucracies, and also how the best collective intentions can get undermined when there is not individual ownership for the outcomes. Scotland and the visionaries at Scottish Water gave me a blueprint for how a nation can create and implement a truly comprehensive resilience plan.

Covid brought me back to France and gave me the space to dive deep into what really matters to me in this phase of life. People. I realized that the red thread that connected all of my work was trying to positively influence the experience people were having in their lives, supported by a symbiotic relationship with their physical environment. My career had been built around the latter, I was missing the expression of the former. I spent the two years of Covid lockdown studying integral coaching, business coaching, life coaching, and hypnotherapy. The two years that followed I have been working as a coach and consultant while continuing to study a host of modalities and practices that support humans to thrive emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

2024 has been a year of integration, bringing together the components of my work together under the title of 5D Architecture. 5D Architecture is a transformative approach that integrates five key components for a successful and empowered life: self-relationship, interpersonal connections, supportive physical environments, optimized technology use, and holistic health. This comprehensive framework helps individuals and companies design and live their fullest expression with clarity and purpose.