I was a pediatrician before I was a coach. I left because I got sick.

It built for two years while I ignored every signal. I just kept pushing through. Then I fell asleep at a red light, driving to the hospital. And I started having severe insomnia in between on calls. I felt trapped but didn't know how to get out. I'd invested 10 years of my life and it was a huge part of my identity.

Getting better took 23 years. Finding the right doctor, but also addressing some limiting beliefs and patterns that got me in trouble in the first place.

I don't tell that story for sympathy. I tell it because I now work with founders running the exact pattern I ran, who believe, as I did, that they're the exception. I'm not going to lecture anyone about balance. I just know what it costs.

The part of medicine I miss is the parents.

When a child is seriously ill, something happens very fast between you and the people in that room. No performance, no small talk. They tell you the truth because there's no time for anything else. I haven't found many places where people get that real that quickly. And there's an emotional intimacy that I find very appealing.

But there was never time to stay in it. Fifteen minutes, next patient.

That's most of why I coach. I get to stay. Dive deep.

The rest of what I took from medicine is a way of thinking. In pediatrics the complaint you're handed is almost never the problem – your patient can't always tell you what hurts, and the adult describing it is frightened, which shapes what they say. You learn to hold a few possibilities at once and not grab the first one that fits.

So when a founder tells me their VP of Engineering isn't delivering, I hear a presenting complaint. Sometimes it really is the VP. More often it's something they haven't looked at yet: what they believe about their own authority, a conversation they've been putting off, expectations that were never actually stated out loud.

That's the work.

The deeper goal

Most founders I meet are, in some quiet way, owned by the company they started. It sets their calendar, their mood, what they're allowed to want.

They'd call that commitment. Some of it is. Some of it is a cage they built and then forgot they built.

I want people to come out of this leading in a way they'd actually choose – and able to tell which is which.

Background

Thirteen years coaching founders and executives, mostly in early-stage venture-backed companies. Before that, pediatrics in Buenos Aires.

Two things came with me. One is the diagnostic habit. The other is that pediatrics is a preventive specialty – you see healthy children on purpose, because catching something early is far cheaper than fixing it late. I think about culture in a growing company the same way. Ideally founders come to me before their limiting beliefs and patterns have set into the culture.

Training

Integral Coach, New Ventures West. A developmental approach – concerned with how people grow over time, not which technique to apply on Tuesday. It's well regarded inside the coaching world and barely known outside it.

Professional Certified Coach (PCC), International Coaching Federation.

How I work

The relationship is the method. Being pushed by someone who doesn't know you deeply is just criticism, and you can get that anywhere.

So I'll tell you what I'm seeing instead of what's comfortable, and I'll ask for more than you'd ask of yourself. If you tell me about the same person three times, I'm going to ask what your part in it is. Most clients say that's the most useful thing about working with me. Almost none of them expected it, and a few of them didn't enjoy it at the time.

I grew up in Argentina, where people tell you what they think and feel whether you want to hear it or not. In the beginning I was called rude. Too direct (especially coming from a woman). I've developed a wide range since then and can adjust as needed – though the Argentinian way tends to be more efficient, and founders tend to appreciate that.

Sessions are confidential, no exceptions, including when your company is paying me.

I also do 360-degree feedback assessments, co-founder coaching, and workshop facilitation.

Personal

I have two addictions: pickleball and buying plants. I play almost every day with friends who care more about the laughing than the score, and my living room holds more plants than it reasonably should. I also walk in the woods when I need to think, or to stop thinking.

Based in the Bay Area, working with founders remotely and in person.