Leading with an Overflowing Cup: Turning My Path into Purpose
How authentic leadership and personal resilience transform the way we pour into others.
Leading With an Overflowing Cup
I have always said that my cup overflows so I can pour into other people's cups. That is not just how I lead—it is who I am.
My career path was not built by following a perfectly mapped-out plan. It was built through hard work, unexpected opportunities, difficult seasons, and the decision to keep showing up. Every role I have held has taught me something, but the most important lesson has been that leadership is not about a title. It is about what you bring out in other people.
Throughout my career, I have worked in customer service, escalations, operations, sales, workforce management, coaching, and leadership. I spent 14 years with Verizon, working my way through multiple roles before becoming a senior retail leader. I led large teams, managed high-volume locations, supported multiple stores, developed future leaders, and helped my teams achieve results that placed us among the highest-performing stores in the company.
I am proud of the awards and recognition I earned, including five Winner's Circle awards and two Director's Club honors. But the moments that mean the most to me are not the ones represented by a plaque or a ranking. They are the moments when someone I coached finally believed in themselves, earned a promotion, achieved something they did not think was possible, or trusted me enough to tell me they needed help.
That is where my passion lives.
I believe people perform at their best when they feel seen, supported, and valued. Accountability matters, and I have never been afraid to set clear expectations or have difficult conversations. But accountability and empathy can exist in the same room. In fact, I believe the strongest leaders know how to provide both.
My leadership style is deeply personal because my path has been deeply personal. I know what it feels like to walk into work while carrying things no one else can see. I know what it means to lead through grief, uncertainty, major life changes, and moments when giving up would have been easier. Those experiences did not make me weaker as a leader. They made me more aware, more compassionate, and more determined to advocate for others.
Being diagnosed with ADHD later in life also changed the way I understood myself. For years, qualities that made me different could have been viewed as weaknesses. Eventually, I recognized that many of them were also my strengths: my ability to see what others miss, solve problems quickly, connect deeply with people, challenge systems that are not working, and fight fiercely for what is right.
My path has also taught me that resilience does not mean pretending something did not hurt. It means acknowledging that it did, learning from it, and refusing to let it decide what happens next.
After dedicating 14 years to one company, I recently found myself facing an unexpected career transition. It was not the ending I anticipated, especially after giving so much of myself to my work and my team. But I am choosing to see this moment for what it can become: the beginning of a new chapter.
I am taking everything I built with me—the experience, the lessons, the relationships, the results, and the ability to lead people through change. No company or job title created those qualities in me, and no ending can take them away.
My passion is helping people recognize their own value, especially when they cannot see it yet. I want to continue building teams where people feel safe enough to grow, strong enough to be accountable, and inspired enough to achieve more than they thought they could. I want to use my voice to advocate for women, working mothers, neurodivergent professionals, and anyone who has ever questioned whether their path was too complicated to become something meaningful.
There is no perfect path to leadership. Sometimes the detours, losses, and hardest seasons become the very things that prepare us to lead with greater purpose.
I do not know exactly what title will come next, but I know what I will bring to it. I will bring experience, courage, loyalty, empathy, accountability, and a genuine commitment to helping others succeed.
My path is still being written. My purpose, however, is already clear: to lead with heart, use my voice, advocate for others, and continue pouring into people from a cup that refuses to stop overflowing.
