A little about me
I spent years helping leaders find their voice. Then I had to find my own.
For over 17 years, I worked in corporate leadership across brand, marketing, PR, and executive communications. I was usually close to the action: helping an executive prepare for a difficult conversation, positioning a company through change, building a team, managing a crisis, or figuring out what to do when the plan stopped going according to plan.
I loved that work. I was good at it.
I had also outgrown my role long before I admitted it. The company was in constant motion, with restructuring, layoffs, and one reorg after another, and my nervous system was on high alert for years. I felt stuck and unfulfilled, and I knew it. I kept telling myself I should build something new. I never did.
I called it loyalty. It was fear in disguise.
Then I was laid off, and the decision I'd been avoiding for years was made for me. The obvious move was to find another role just like it. But when I looked honestly at what had happened, I saw a pattern that had been running the show my whole career. I'd second-guessed my own judgment, stayed where I was good instead of where I wanted to be, and waited for permission that was never coming.
Deciding not to go back was the first decision in a long time that was completely mine.
I didn't need more confidence. I needed to hear myself again.
I've spent enough time around successful women to know how easy it is to miss this.
From the outside, everything can look fine. The career is moving, the responsibilities keep growing, and people trust you to deliver. Meanwhile, you're second-guessing a decision you've already made. Saying yes when you mean no. Looking around the room before deciding what you think.
That was familiar to me. So was the pressure to keep achieving and make it look effortless.
I know what it feels like to realize that somewhere along the way, you've become very good at being the person everyone else can count on and a little less practiced at counting on yourself.
That's the work I care about now.
What I bring to the work
I didn't leave corporate and suddenly become an expert on self-trust. I brought over 17 years of experience with me.
My work spanned brand, PR, and communications across tech, professional services, higher education, and manufacturing. I partnered with executives, led global marketing teams, and helped brands through high-stakes growth and change. I led communications through multiple company-wide rebrands and M&As. I've spent a lot of time thinking about what makes someone credible in a room, and what happens when they lose access to it.
I also know from experience what it's like when the external version of success stops being enough.
That combination shapes how I work with clients. We're not going to sit around talking about becoming your "best self." We're going to look at what's actually happening in your life, where you're getting in your own way, what you want, and what you're afraid of.
Sometimes that means making a decision you've been avoiding. Sometimes it means saying something you've been editing, or admitting that the thing you've worked so hard to build isn't what you want anymore.
And sometimes you don't know yet. That's okay too.
Speaking
I also bring this work to organizations, leadership programs, and women's leadership groups. My talks explore what happens to capable leaders under pressure: why smart women lose access to their own judgment when the room gets tense, and how the habits that built their success can start costing them their voice.
Why Inner Badass?
The name came from a belief that has become pretty simple for me: you don't need to become someone else. You need to trust yourself enough to be who you already are.
That's harder than it sounds, especially when you've spent years learning to read the room, meet expectations, keep everyone happy, and do things "the right way."
Inner Badass is the work of coming back to yourself underneath all of that, with a little more honesty, a little less self-interference, and a lot more trust in your own judgment.
A Note from Me
"I spent nearly two decades in executive rooms, first living this pattern myself, then watching it happen to woman after woman across the table from me. I still catch parts of it as an entrepreneur. The difference is that now I can see it and name it, and I know what it costs when we don't.
This is the work I wish someone had helped me do sooner."
Holly Subervi, Founder, Inner Badass
If any of this feels familiar, let's talk.
You don't need to know exactly what you need before you reach out.