I Didn't Set Out To Do This Work. I Needed To.
For nearly three decades I worked at the top of the creative advertising world. Nike. McDonald's. Samsung. Microsoft. I was good at it. Genuinely good at it. And for a long time, I told myself that was who I was.
Then it wasn't.
At 50 I was furloughed from the global leadership role I had spent my career building. Suddenly everything that I thought defined me, was gone. Before I could process that, my personal life was turned upside down by cancer and the loss of loved ones, all within a few months. My old sense of self and identity were replaced with a new version of me I had to create.
Through all of it I wrote a book. Not because I had answers. Because I was trying to find them.
What came out of that period was not a strategy. It was a completely different understanding of what it costs to spend your career building a version of yourself based on what others say you should be while quietly losing connection with who you actually are.
That is not a business insight. It is a human one. And it is the reason I do this work. If any of this sounds familiar, the next step is a conversation.
What I Bring To This Work
I used to define who I was by the title I had and the work I did. My reputation was global. My identity was intrinsically linked with award-winning creative work for world-famous brands. I was proud of it. When my executive role came to a crashing halt, everything I thought defined me ended.
Amongst the anger and the shock of it all, something happened that I didn't expect. Something inside was pulling in a new direction. It was time to build something new. But I didn't know what.
For months I drifted, wondering who I was now and what I really wanted. But I had no idea how to answer that for myself. So, I travelled, I explored new ventures, I tried to fill the void but nothing felt right. Having an empty slate to choose anything and do anything became paralyzing for me.
The road to self-awareness and self-authority is paved with introspection and personal revelations. My journey uncovered beliefs I had adopted from others and was blindly following. Self-doubt and imposter syndrome crept up on me just when I thought I found solid ground. I spiralled. I got stuck in patterns and loops that held me back. Weeks turned into months. Months turned into years. I kept telling myself I was making progress but the truth is I ended up right where I started. Until I created a way out.
That's when I stopped looking for the answer outside myself and started building one from the inside. Steeped in what I was learning about identity through Jungian psychology, grounded in what I was actually experiencing, I created the framework I needed. That framework became the Reclaim method. And it became this practice.
I'm not someone who studied this from a distance and built a program around it. I'm someone who needed a way through it and didn't find one that worked, so I built my own. That is what I bring to this work. Not answers. A map drawn from the territory.
"He who looks outside himself dreams. He who looks inward awakes."
- Carl Jung
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