A powerful exploration of self-discovery and authenticity. This article examines how success and social adaptation can lead to self-abandonment, and the transformative journey of reclaiming your true voice and returning to your authentic self.
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Influential Woman · Business Consulting and Services
Sandy Davis
Founder, Leadership Advisor, Workshop Facilitator & Podcast Host, Elevate Within with Sandy Davis & Elevate Operations Advisory
Lake Forest, CA 92630
1Year experience
1Article published
Her Story
About Sandy
Sandy Davis is the founder of Elevate Operations Advisory, a firm offering fractional operations leadership to founder-led businesses, including commercial real estate and professional services companies. With more than 25 years of experience leading operations at organizations such as Colliers, CBRE, and SRS Real Estate Partners, she helps growing companies through what she calls the "messy middle," the stage between growth and scale. Her work centers on building the systems, structure, and accountability that free founders from being the bottleneck for every decision. Her results include more than $300,000 in annual cost savings, productivity gains above 20 percent, and multi-site expansions completed with zero downtime.
Beyond her advisory work, Davis hosts the Elevate Within with Sandy Davis podcast and its companion Substack, where she explores leadership, burnout, reinvention, and healing. She is passionate about helping women recognize the early signs of anxiety and burnout, break the conditions they have inherited, and reinvent themselves without apology. A high school graduate who credits the school of hard knocks in New York City for her education, she draws on lived experience and a deep belief that every operational challenge is ultimately a human one.
Davis is a member of the Entrepreneurista League and gives her time to causes close to her heart, including the Manette Foundation, which expands access to mental health therapy for low-income families in the Bronx, and support for children who are wards of the state coping with severe trauma. Guided by the example of her mother and grandmother, she lives by the values of community, authenticity, clarity, and paying it forward. Away from work, she enjoys reading biographies, walking the trails of Orange County, California with her dog, Rocco, and connecting with other women to share stories.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Sandy
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to resilience, faith, curiosity, operational discipline, and the willingness to begin again. My parents and grandmother shaped me in different ways and taught me lessons about strength, perseverance, community, and using what I have lived through to help others.
I learned early how to survive, adapt, and keep moving, but my greatest growth came when I stopped believing survival had to be the way I lived and led. The women who trust me with their stories continue to remind me that success is not only what we accomplish. It is also what we make possible for others.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
You do not need certainty before you move. You need enough clarity to take the next honest step.
I spent years believing I needed to know the entire plan before changing direction. Reinvention taught me that confidence often comes after the decision, not before it. Sometimes the next step becomes clear only after we give ourselves permission to take it.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Never shrink yourself to make other people comfortable. Know what you contribute, ask questions, negotiate, build genuine relationships, and do not confuse exhaustion with ambition.
You do not have to prove your value by doing everything alone or working twice as hard until you disappear inside the work. Let your definition of success include your wellbeing, your boundaries, and your ability to remain yourself while you grow.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One of the greatest challenges is that many workplaces still reward the patterns that are exhausting women. Over functioning, perfectionism, carrying everyone else, performing strength, and protecting harmony are often praised as commitment and leadership. Because these patterns can look like competence, burnout and anxiety may remain hidden until the personal cost becomes impossible to ignore.
The opportunity is to create honest and professionally appropriate spaces where women can recognize these patterns without shame and practice healthier ways to communicate, set boundaries, delegate, make decisions, ask for support, and lead. When women stop equating leadership with self abandonment, organizations gain stronger and more sustainable leaders.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Integrity, clarity, courage, community, reciprocity, service, and presence are the values that guide me.
I believe in telling the truth with care, creating spaces where people feel seen, and building relationships rooted in mutual support. I want my work to help people move forward with greater clarity while also reminding them that success should not require abandoning themselves.
Her Content Hub
Articles by Sandy
It Still Fits
Rediscovering Your Authentic Self: A Journey From Self-Abandonment Back to Home
There was a version of me who did not hesitate.
I didn't wait until I felt ready. I didn't ask whether everything would work. I simply moved.
I was in my late twenties, living in New York. By day, I worked in investment banking. My world was structured, predictable, and responsible. By night, I was building something of my own called Sassy's Entertainment.
I did not know exactly what I was doing, but I did not believe I needed to know everything before I began. I trusted myself enough to try.
There is a certain freedom in that kind of self-trust. You do not overthink every decision, second-guess every step, or wait for someone else to give you permission. You begin, learn as you move, make adjustments, and keep going.
I made mistakes. A lot of them. But I figured things out in real time. That version of me felt fearless. Not because nothing could go wrong, but because I was not afraid to find out what would happen.
When Growth Begins to Look Like Self-Abandonment
Life eventually shifted, but not all at once. I moved to Southern California and entered my thirties and forties. I began paying closer attention to the rooms I entered. I learned when to speak, when to remain quiet, what created opportunity, and what created friction.
Without realizing it, I began adjusting. Not completely. Just enough to move more smoothly. Enough to avoid unnecessary conflict. Enough to fit.
I told myself this was growth, and some of it was. Experience should shape us. Wisdom should change how we move.
But there is a difference between expanding who you are and editing yourself until you become easier for everyone else to receive. Some of what I called growth was really me placing pieces of myself aside.
I didn't throw them away. I simply put them somewhere safe and told myself I would return for them later. I didn't think I was losing anything. I thought I was becoming who I needed to be. Little by little, I stopped reaching for certain parts of myself until I forgot they were there.
This can happen easily to women who are used to succeeding. We become skilled at reading rooms, carrying what others cannot, performing strength, protecting harmony, and giving people the version of us that creates the least resistance. These patterns are often rewarded, which makes them difficult to recognize.
From the outside, it can look like professionalism, maturity, or leadership. Inside, it can feel like slowly disappearing.
The Moment I Stopped Negotiating With Myself
The shift did not arrive with an announcement. There was no dramatic turning point. It was quieter than that. One day, something in me felt different. The fear was still there, but it was no longer in charge.
For the first time in years, I was not trying to talk myself out of what I wanted. That was when I noticed how often I had been negotiating with myself.
Maybe later. Maybe when things settle down. Maybe when it makes more sense.
I had become comfortable waiting, but I could no longer explain what I was waiting for. I used to trust myself enough to start and figure things out along the way. Somewhere in the process of becoming more polished, responsible, and acceptable, I stopped trusting that part of myself.
Instead, I began trying on different versions. Some were quieter. Some were more polished. Some made fewer people uncomfortable. Each one worked for a particular room, role, or season. I wore one for a while and then replaced it with another, rarely stopping to ask one important question:
Is this actually me?
Eventually, none of those versions felt like home. So I stopped.
I became honest about the spaces where I had stayed too long, the moments when I made myself smaller, and the times I chose what felt comfortable over what felt right. I didn't do those things because I was weak. At the time, they felt safer.
But I was no longer in that place. I quietly made a decision. I would not remain in a version of my life that required me to shrink. I would not stay in spaces that only worked when I made myself smaller. With that decision came release.
I released expectations, roles, and versions of myself that were never meant to be permanent. I even released some people. Not with anger or blame, but with understanding.
I can love someone and still choose a different direction. I can appreciate what a season gave me and still know when it is time to leave. Sometimes the most honest form of leadership is deciding that you will no longer abandon yourself to maintain what has become familiar.
It Still Fits
When I think about that season now, I picture a closet. It was full of different versions of me, lined up across the rack. Some looked right. Some worked for a while. Some received approval from everyone around me. But none of them felt like home.
Then I noticed something in the back. It was covered in plastic and had not been touched in years. I remembered it immediately. That was mine.
It was my signature piece. My original voice. My authentic self. I had packed it away when I left New York and began building a different life in California. I told myself I would return for it, but I became accustomed to wearing everything else. I stood there looking at it because I was not sure it would still fit. Years had passed. Life had changed me. Loss had left me in pieces, and experience had reshaped me.
Still, I pulled it out, removed the covering, and tried it on. The moment I did, I knew. It still fits!
Not because I am still the woman I was in my late twenties. I have earned wisdom, discernment, scars, boundaries, and a deeper understanding of myself. It fits because my voice never stopped belonging to me. I did not lose my voice. I simply stopped choosing it.
I became distracted by what made sense, what felt safer, and what gained approval. But beneath every role and every adjustment, my authentic self was still there.
This time, I am not putting her away. I'm not rotating through different versions of myself based on the room. I'm not adjusting until no one can recognize what is truly mine. I'm choosing to show up as myself. Fully.
Not because it is always easy, but because it's right. I trust myself again. I trust myself to move, build, learn, make mistakes, and figure things out along the way. I have done it before, and I will do it again. This time, I will do it as me.
What Are You Still Negotiating With Yourself About?
Returning to yourself does not require one dramatic decision. It may begin with telling the truth sooner, setting one boundary, asking for support, letting someone else carry what belongs to them, or making a decision without waiting for everyone to agree.
Ask yourself:
- What part of me have I placed in the back of the closet because it created friction?
- Which version of myself am I wearing because it receives approval?
- What would I choose if I stopped negotiating with what I already know?
Some people may call this starting over. I do not.
I call it coming back to myself.
If any part of this resonates with you, remember this:
You are not starting over. You are returning to the part of yourself that was always yours, this time with the wisdom to protect it. And this time, you do not have to put her away.
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