I sat across from a founder last year. Series B, backed by a well-known fund, team of 60. From the outside, everything was working. Valuation up. Press coverage good. Investors pleased. He looked at me and said: "I have never felt more alone in my life." I have heard some version of that sentence more times than I can count. From founders. From VPs who were just promoted. From CEOs who are, on paper, at the peak of everything they worked for. The success arrives — and the iso

Don't get me wrong. As a leader, you should be strict about your time. Ruthless, even. Your calendar is one of your most strategic assets, and protecting it matters. Boundaries matter. Saying no matters. And yet. Some of the worst leadership decisions I see are made by people who are constantly telling people they "don't have time." Not because they're lazy. Not because they're careless. But because they're operating from a place of deep psychological scarcity. The Time-Rich,

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. — T.S. Eliot I’ve been thinking about this poem a lot lately. Exploration is rarely the glamorous, expansive thing we imagine it to be. Most of the time, it’s disorienting. It strips away labels. It removes the scaffolding that once made life feel coherent. It asks uncomfortable questions long before it offers any clarity in

Congratulations. You got the promotion. The title changed. The compensation went up. Maybe you got a new team, a bigger scope, or a seat at a different table. Most people think the hard part is over. It's not. It's just starting. Here's what usually happens: People spend months (sometimes years) positioning themselves for a promotion. They work extra hours. They take on stretch projects. They manage up. They do everything right. Then they get the promotion — and promptly take

A few months ago, a founder I coach said something I hear almost every week: "I feel like I'm juggling twenty balls, and none of them can drop." She runs a fast-growing startup. Her calendar is a wall of back-to-back meetings. She's managing a team, closing deals, mentoring, hiring, fundraising, fixing ops issues. If this sounds familiar to you, you are not alone. Whether you're a founder, an executive, or a people manager, the reality is the same: You're constantly pul

Eight years later, she still remembered the message. It was 2016, and I was preparing to welcome a new hire to our team at Google. She...

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Two weeks ago, I ran a leadership training with a group of newly promoted managers at a well-known global tech company. The group was...

I grew up in a monocultural environment. Most of my friends were Turkish, from a similar middle-class background, and I attended Turkish...

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On January 21, 2025 , I woke up to the devastating news of a fire at the Grand Kartal Hotel in Kartalkaya, a cherished ski resort in...

As the year comes to a close, the buzz around New Year’s resolutions hits its peak. Gym memberships skyrocket, planners fly off the...

Picture this: You join a new team at a massive global corporation, only to find it feels more like a family drama than a professional...

When my 7-year-old daughter decided to try Irish dance a few years ago, neither my husband nor I had any idea what we were signing up...

Recently, I’ve noticed a significant increase in people reaching out to work with me, eager to make a major shift in how they structure...