About me

I am an experienced leadership coach specialized in working with high-performing professionals and emerging leaders.  Since 2011, I have coached hundreds of top MBA candidates, managers and startup executives on leadership, professional and personal development.  My clients include professionals from large companies such as Google, Facebook, McKinsey, Clorox, Logitech and entrepreneurs from Y Combinator and 500 Startups.  I also currently serve as a leadership /career coach at the Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley.  I trained Berkeley Leadership Fellows on Non-violent Communication, coaching and facilitation skills, and provided ongoing group coaching support during the 6-month Berkeley Leaders’ Lab Program impacting 250+ MBA students.  I have created and led trainings and workshops on personal branding, networking, interpersonal communication, interviewing, self-awareness development and public speaking.  
 
I care deeply about the long-term success and overall well-being of my clients.  I also believe that our leadership/professional development is intertwined with our personal development. Therefore, I take an individualized, integral and developmental approach to coaching.  I work with my clients to gain better awareness about themselves from different aspects of life, uncover blind-spots and build new and stronger competencies to increase their effectiveness at work and in life.  My coaching approach often goes beyond solving a specific problem at work.  I help my clients discover their own limiting beliefs and identify the areas for growth beneath the surface problem.  I then work with them to come up with practices to change habits, shift their perspectives and build new capabilities so that they will be able to resolve future challenges by themselves.  The topics I often work with my clients include interpersonal and group dynamics, managing down, up and across, giving and receiving feedback, emotional intelligence, developing authentic voice, executive presence and communication, prioritization and delegation, work/life balance, inner critic and vulnerability.  Additionally, as a woman of color and someone who grew up in a foreign country (China) with very different cultural context from the West, I also bring an awareness and sensitivity to the many aspects of diversity and culture in the business world to my coaching.  
 
Prior to becoming a coach, I worked as a management consultant at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).  During my tenure at BCG, I advised executives from a diverse range of fortune 500 companies in sectors such as healthcare, technology and consumer goods, on business strategy and organizational development.  I also have professional experiences in biopharma, venture capital, entrepreneurship and non-profits.  
 
I am a Professional Certified Coach through the International Coach Federation.  I hold an MBA and a Master in Engineering Management from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, and a BA in Biochemistry from Occidental College.  I received my first leadership coaching training in 2011 at Kellogg and served as a Coaching Fellow at Northwestern University’s Center for Leadership.   I completed New Ventures West Professional Coaching Certification in 2015.  I also received Interpersonal Dynamics Trainings from Stanford and Group Facilitation Training from Berkeley.  I leverage the latest research in neuroscience, psychology and adult learning and development in my coaching, and I often draw insights from my meditation (vipassana insight meditation), dance and conscious parenting practices to my coaching approach.  The authors that have greatly influenced my coaching include Carl Rogers, Robert Kegan, Brene Brown, Viktor Frankl, Irvin Yelom and Richard Rohr. 

Teaching at the Riordan Fellows Program at UCLA Anderson School of Management