Introducing: Starlight Leadership
After 7+ years of coaching and guiding work and 4 years of full-time practice, I am excited to announce that my business is taking on a new name: Starlight Leadership. As I explain below, this name encapsulates what I’ve come to understand as the essence of what I do: help others embody their light.
Starlight Leadership represents the unifying theme that pulls together the three focus areas that I’m now cultivating in my practice: executive coaching, nature-based quests and retreats, and group explorations of awakened leadership.
The Meaning Behind Starlight Leadership
Starlight Leadership is an ode to a powerful dream that came to me seven years ago and changed my life. The dream became a guiding light for me as I navigated my path toward living aligned with my purpose and passion. Today, I’ve come to realize that this dream is also a metaphorical representation of the essence of my work, the greatest gift I have to give to the world, and what I believe true leadership looks like.
In September 2014, I embarked on a vision quest with Animas Valley Institute in the desert canyonlands of southern Utah. Halfway through my MBA program at Stanford, life looked pretty ideal on the surface. But underneath, I was suffering. A primary drive for me to attend business school had been a deep longing, born from the depths of the corporate grind, to find a truly meaningful path for my life and career. I had the audacity to believe (thanks to my two remarkable parents) that it was possible for me to be lit up by my work -- that work could make me come alive. I believed that if I could chart a path aligned with my deeper purpose, that path could lead me to becoming the version of myself I had always wanted to be.
One year into business school, I was getting a lot of things I wanted, but I didn’t feel any closer to that. If anything, I felt farther away. I was scared and lost. My grip on the rudder of my life felt shaky, and I questioned myself deeply. Would I ever truly become the person, the leader, I longed to be? Could I ever actually realize my deepest dreams? If not… who was I? And what was the point?
On the final night of my quest, as I lay asleep beneath the steep canyon walls and the starry desert sky, an answer appeared in a dream (probably the last place I expected to find it).
I am walking slowly up a small canyon stream. The water rushes over my feet. The canyon forest is dark around me. A bright light emanates from upstream -- pure white, like the light of a star. I look down and realize that the same bright white light is emanating from my chest. It creates a radiant sensation of warmth in my heart center as it shines. As I step further into the light coming from upstream, my own light reaches out ahead of me. The two sources of light merge and blend into one.
Behind me, there are others. I can’t see their faces, but I know they are my people, and I am leading them. I can’t say exactly where we are going, but I know that wherever it is, it is good. I step forward with confidence. I am rooted in the earth, grounded in my body, and completely, fully, alive. As the others step upstream, a light grows brighter in each of their chests: their own inner starlight.
I awoke and jolted upright in my sleeping bag, immediately alert, a powerful energy coursing through my body and a burning heat emanating from my chest. I put my hand over my heart, amazed to feel that my chest actually did seem warm to the touch. A beaming, baffled grin crept across my face. I knew I wasn’t going back to sleep. I spent the next 90 minutes before dawn roaming in the darkness, the forest and canyon walls lit up by the gentle glow of the stars above. I felt so completely alive, so electrified with clear energy and presence, that it felt as if my feet were barely touching the ground. I knew that whatever happened next, if I could just stay close to this feeling and come back to it when I drifted from it, I would find my way to the path I had been seeking.
I have come to understand this dream as a direct encounter with my soul — by which I mean the deepest part of myself, the part of me that knows my true purpose and capacity for service in this lifetime. The dream didn’t give me the practical answer I thought I wanted, but it opened a door to connection with that deeper part of me. To this day, the embodied sensations I feel when I connect with this dream are my most powerful inner guide, showing me where I want to go and who I want to become.
Looking back, I can also see that this dream may have been pointing me toward the realization that my greatest gift to the world is to let myself be drawn by my “starlight” -- that radiating warmth, power, and aliveness that emanates from my grounded essence when I am completely present and connected to my deeper self. If I could learn to embody that light, perhaps I could help others nurture and embody their own starlight, too.
As I’ve walked this path in the years since that dream, constantly experimenting, often drifting off course, but persistently finding my way back to that sense of aliveness, I’ve also realized that some of my most natural skills — what I might call my zone of genius — match remarkably well with this vision. I have a unique ability, for example, to see and believe in the light of others, sometimes before they can themselves. I also have the ability to help others embrace darkness, especially their own inner darkness, which I’ve come to understand as an imperative task for anyone who wishes to fully embody their light.
As this picture came into clarity, the name Starlight Leadership emerged, and then sat with me until I couldn’t resist its pull any longer.
What I Believe True Leadership Looks Like
As Howard Thurman reminds us in his classic quote that now greets anyone who lands on my home page, the world needs people who have come alive. I have come to believe that in today’s world, as we face rising tensions and impending ecological disaster, Thurman’s wisdom is more relevant than ever before. What we seem likely to face as a collective in the near future is poised to demand from us everything we’ve got. To come out on top, we’ll need to utilize our full potential for aliveness. We’ll need to leverage that aliveness to help us evolve and transform radically enough to change our own standards of what is possible.
What if the path toward the evolution that life is demanding of us is none other than embodying our starlight -- that which makes us come most alive? What if the (sometimes seemingly conflicting) paths toward stepping into our most powerful leadership in the world, fulfilling our greatest individual potential, experiencing our most profound sense of purpose and joy, being most authentic to our inner truth, and bringing our world into a more life-enhancing future -- are all actually one and the same?
I have come to believe that not only is that exactly the case, but that is what true leadership looks like. I don’t care what your job title is, how many people report to you, or what kind of living you make. If you are mustering the courage to be fully authentic with your inner truth, do what makes you come alive, and embrace the darkness within and outside of yourself so that you can be a channel for your starlight to shine, then you are a true leader. Best of all, your example reminds others that they can walk this path of leadership, too.
If this definition of leadership resonates with you and you want to explore how I could support you on this path, check out my coaching and retreat offerings, and get in touch.
Building An Organization
Beyond the symbolism of Starlight Leadership, another reason I decided to take on this new name is that I aspire to build an organization and brand that goes far beyond myself. While the inspiration for Starlight Leadership may have arisen from my own experience, my hope is that it represents an idea and a set of values that many can rally around. Someday, I hope to see a team of many people supporting this vision and bringing it into reality in ways far beyond what I ever could have imagined, let alone pulled off, on my own. If the vision I have laid out here and on the Starlight Leadership site calls to you and you feel excited about collaborating under this banner, I’d love to hear from you.
If You Really Knew Me...
If you really knew me, you would know that I agonized over this decision. I waffled and procrastinated for months, paralyzed by fear. I went down rabbit hole domain name searches, ran countless arguments in my head in favor of different names, and did anything I could to put off writing this post. I loved the symbolism of Starlight Leadership, but thought it would sound too woo-woo. I wanted to tell the story of my dream, but thought if I did, people would think I’d gone off the deep end. Believing these thoughts had me swirling in familiar fear stories: My clients would no longer want to work with me. I’d scare off new clients, especially the powerful and impressive ones. Showing my deepest authenticity would only get me ultimate rejection. I would dwindle, ashamed and unloved, into insignificance.
My hunch is that an even deeper fear was the real culprit behind my paralysis: that a public declaration of my soul path might push me to actually walk that path more fully. My ego knows this path is likely to be quite different than the ones it fantasizes about, and it’s terrified of that. Worse yet, walking this path might actually lead me to become bigger and more significant, and therefore more vulnerable to criticism or failure. Of course my ego, the ultimate defender of status quo, would mobilize all possible defenses to keep me from taking the leap.
Who knows which of these stories, if any, will play out. In this moment, it doesn’t seem to matter. I am choosing to do what makes me come alive. So, let the future bring what it will. I am ready. Are you with me? ;)