I work with organizations navigating the moment when strong technologists step into larger leadership roles and the stakes rise fast.
Without intentional leadership development, decision-making slows, alignment weakens, and quiet organizational risk takes hold often long before it becomes visible.
A Leadership Moment That Carries Quiet Risk
Many organizations reach a familiar inflection point.
A strong technologist steps into a broader leadership role, but the surrounding system does not evolve with them. What follows is usually quiet, but rarely neutral.
- Alignment across engineering, product, and business becomes harder to sustain
- Decisions slow or fragment as scope and expectations expand
- Risk accumulates quietly through missed signals, strained relationships, and uneven execution
This moment is common. It’s also where the right kind of leadership support matters most.
The Unicorn’s Ascent Framework™
My work is guided by a single, structured approach: the Unicorn’s Ascent Framework™. It was developed to support technical leaders as their scope expands and expectations change, without reducing leadership growth to personality traits or generic advice.
The framework helps organizations align leadership behavior, decision-making, and communication as responsibility increases. It creates clarity for the leader, confidence for the executive sponsor, and consistency across the system.
A practical way to understand the framework is to think of leadership growth as an expedition up a mountain. Each phase reflects a different kind of leadership work required as conditions, pressure, and visibility change.
- Awareness is surveying the mountain from the base, understanding the terrain, the weather, and the distance ahead.
- Stability is establishing a secure base camp, gaining solid footing and acclimating to the altitude.
- Clarity is choosing a route deliberately, understanding why one path must be taken over another.
- Execution is the climb itself, applying skill and judgment consistently as the slope steepens.
- Navigation is adjusting when conditions change, reading the environment, and recalibrating without losing direction.
- Trajectory is the endurance required to sustain progress over time, not just reach a single summit.
The goal is not to change who someone is, but to help the system around them evolve so leadership can scale responsibly.
Who This Is For
For Executive Sponsors
For Executive Sponsors
For Executive Sponsors
This work is for executives who have promoted a strong technologist into a broader leadership role and want to ensure that transition succeeds.
You may be looking for:
- Stronger executive presence and decision-making
- Better alignment across engineering, product, and business
- Earlier visibility into risk before it becomes a problem
- Leadership growth without undermining authority
This is not performance management, consulting, or a replacement for leadership responsibility. It is structured support designed to protect people and outcomes as scope increases.
For Technical Leaders
For Executive Sponsors
For Executive Sponsors
This work is for technical leaders whose role has expanded beyond execution into alignment, influence, and decision-making.
You may be navigating:
- Increased responsibility without clear preparation
- High-stakes conversations that feel unfamiliar
- Pressure to lead peers and other leaders
- The challenge of scaling your impact without burning out
This is not therapy, mentoring, or advice-dumping. It is focused leadership development grounded in real technical systems.
Experience That Grounds the Work
This work is grounded in long-term exposure to how technical organizations actually operate under pressure, not abstract leadership theory.
- 35+ years in technology, spanning engineering, architecture, and senior technical leadership
- Leadership development through a coaching lens, informed by real delivery constraints and organizational risk
- Deep familiarity with engineering culture, including how trust, autonomy, and technical credibility shape influence
- Cross-functional alignment experience, working at the intersection of engineering, product, design, and business
Over time, a clear pattern emerged: leadership challenges in technical organizations are rarely about capability. They are about systems that have not evolved as responsibility expanded.
Jeff was our Oracle - the person we turned to when we needed a wise, strategic perspective. He doesn’t just give answers; he gives direction. His ability to cut through complexity and offer clear, authoritative guidance made him indispensable to our team.
Speaking & Advisory Work
In addition to one-on-one leadership engagements, I work with executive teams and organizations through facilitated sessions and speaking engagements designed to surface alignment, decision clarity, and trust in technical environments.
Common themes include:
Leadership transitions in technical organizations
Supporting engineers as they step into broader leadership and influence
Decision-making under complexity
Helping teams navigate uncertainty without stalling or over-centralizing
Psychological safety as a performance strategy
Creating conditions where technical teams can think clearly and execute well
These sessions are designed to be practical, grounded, and directly applicable to real organizational challenges.
How to Start
The first step is a straightforward conversation. No pitch. No pressure.
1. Book a Call
3. Decide together how to move forward
2. Talk through context and goals
Choose a time that works for you.
2. Talk through context and goals
3. Decide together how to move forward
2. Talk through context and goals
We’ll explore what’s happening, what you’re noticing, and what you’re hoping to support.
3. Decide together how to move forward
3. Decide together how to move forward
3. Decide together how to move forward
If it makes sense to continue, we’ll outline next steps. If not, you’ll leave with clarity.
This conversation is exploratory by design. It’s meant to create understanding, not obligation.
Leadership transitions in technical organizations rarely fail loudly. More often, potential goes partially unrealized, decisions become heavier than they need to be, and capable people carry more pressure than is visible.
The difference between a role that stretches someone and one that quietly erodes confidence is rarely talent. It’s whether leadership growth is supported with the same care as technical execution.
If you’re sensing that moment now, it’s worth a conversation.
Purple Unicorn Coaching
Technology Leadership Coaching & Speaking