ABOUT
HERE’S WHAT I KNOW FOR SURE :
You can’t lead boldly while quietly questioning your worth.
NO ONE TALKS ABOUT HOW LEADERSHIP CAN FEEL LIKE SURVIVAL.
There’s a version of my story that’s impressive:
Founder of a multi-million dollar a year group mental health practice with multiple locations, that became the largest provider of LGBTQIA+ competent mental healthcare in my city.
Leader of a 30+ person team, including a robust admin and leadership team and employees across the state of Pennsylvania.
A trusted reputation for radical, affirming care for both our clients and our employees.
Sought-after consultant, trainer, and speaker on inclusive business practices, inclusive leadership, operationalizing inclusivity, business ownership, and group practice ownership.
But I could never be proud of that.
Ever.
Because I still hadn’t let go of the belief that my past disqualified me from peace.
Because I was the ‘therapist that did the thing’.
NO ONE TALKS ABOUT WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO LEAD WITH A PIT IN YOUR STOMACH.
To sit in team meetings while quietly spiraling.
To make business decisions while trying not to let the guilt eat you alive.
To keep showing up when a loud part of you whispers:
“You don’t deserve this anymore.”
SO. I LED FROM GUILT.
I MADE DECISIONS I THOUGHT WOULD REDEEM ME.
I let my shame speak louder than my strategy.
I tried to carry everything—
my team, my business, my past, my recovery, the rebuilding of my life, my pain.
I did it while unraveling in a relationship that eroded my confidence and my entire sense of self.
I did it while clawing my way out of that relationship.
I did it while navigating a court system that was deeply invalidating, as my business was continuing with it’s day-to-day functioning.
I did it while unlearning deep codependency, survival mode, and shame-soaked leadership habits.
I did it while being the CEO of a still rapidly growing multi-million dollar practice with infrastructure that wasn’t ready for that growth.
I did it while my leadership team tried to hold the whole thing together, and my team culture started falling apart.
I did it while I did everything I possibly could to take care of my employees, even at the expense of the business.
I DID IT WHILE ALSO FIGHTING TO BELIEVE I WAS STILL ALLOWED TO WANT MORE AND THAT I WAS WORTHY OF RECOVERY, FORGIVENESS, AND SUCCESS.
It broke me.
It almost destroyed me.
Almost.
I eventually stopped pretending I wasn’t still healing.
I eventually stopped apologizing for ‘who I used to be’.
I eventually stopped accepting the idea of leaders, business owners, and CEOs needing to be perfect.
Because… screw that.
And now? I help other people do the same.
ABOUT ME
ABOUT ME
HI, I’M SAM.
she/her
AND WHEN I SAY I’VE F*CKED UP...
I mean I’ve f*cked. up.
HYPE GIRL. COACH. BUSINESS CONSULTANT. SPEAKER. SHAME-CRUSHER. ENTREPRENEURSHIP OBSESSED. CREATIVE. BADASS.
My superpower is creating a space where you can stop pretending, start unraveling, and finally feel safe being seen—because I’ve lived through the unraveling myself.
This isn’t about perfection—it’s about presence. You get to show up with your whole self here, even the parts you’ve been taught to hide. Especially those parts.
Because the version of you that’s been hiding is the one that’s most ready to lead.
MY STORY
The one that I tried to quietly manage, bury, and outrun—until I finally let it lead.
you ready?LET'S DO THIS THING
I’m not here to dress it up or water it down. I’m here to tell the truth—the part I spent years trying to manage behind the scenes, terrified of what it would cost me to say out loud. But the silence was costing me more. So this? This is me finally putting the whole damn thing on the table. Not because I owe anyone an explanation. But because I’m done building a life that only works if I stay quiet. No more pretending. No more shrinking. No more skipping the part that shaped everything that came after.
ALRIGHT. LET’S GO.
The real shame started with the license.
In November 2020, I became the subject of a professional licensing investigation—one centered around a romantic relationship I entered into months earlier with a former client very (I mean, very) soon after terminating therapy, following a social interaction that took place just two days prior to the official end of our clinical work.
What followed was almost two years of fear, silence, second-guessing, and survival. I did everything I could to cooperate, to respond, to manage the emotional and legal weight of it while still trying to lead a business that was scaling faster than I could keep up with. The outcome was that my LCSW license was officially suspended for five years in June 2022.
My practice—built from scratch—grew to nearly $8 million in revenue over just five years, and served thousands of clients over that time. We were a force in both our field and our community. We were changing access to care and building something meaningful.
But behind the scenes, I was completely unraveling.
I found myself in a relationship I never could’ve imagined entering as someone who always prided themselves on professional ethics—and stayed in it long after I should have left. Navigating the license investigation was hard enough. But the dynamics of the relationship itself added a layer of emotional pain and self-destruction that became the part of the story I carried the most quietly—and the most heavily.
It eroded me slowly. Quietly. Until I barely recognized who I was or how I got there. It chipped away at my confidence in ways I couldn’t name at the time. In ways I didn’t even know were possible.
I lost my voice, my clarity, and my ability to trust my own instincts. I ignored red flags, overrode my own needs, and made choices I still carry with me—including the one that crossed a professional boundary.
I completely abandoned myself. I stayed far past safety. I stayed, trying to make it make sense. I stayed, trying to make it work. I confused intensity for love. And I was drowning in it.
That relationship was complicated, intensely painful, and deeply disorienting. It drained me. It confused me. It made me question everything I knew to be true—including, and especially, my own voice. I was deeply, heartbreakingly lost.
I don’t excuse the choices I made—I hold deep accountability for that. I wasn’t perfect in that relationship. And I’m not proud of how that relationship began.
But I also won’t minimize the impact of what I was living through.
And HOW I entered that relationship doesn’t negate what was happening in my reality, or the validity of my experiences.
The truth is: I wasn’t a great leader during those years. Far from it.
Not because I didn’t care—but because I was leading from absolute depletion.
I was inconsistent.
I was burnt out.
I was reactive.
I was trying to protect everyone but myself and my business.
But I did the very best I could.
Somehow, I still woke up every single day, trying to lead. Still trying to push my practice and my team forward.
I struggled so badly with whether or not I should just ‘rip the bandaid off’ and tell my team as the investigation continued, but I was so lost and so confused by that point, that I didn’t trust my own judgement.
I eventually confided in my Clinical Director (at the time), who felt that it would be ‘less disruptive’ if I didn’t come clean about it to our staff. At the time, that made sense to me. In hindsight, I deeply regret that.
When the licensing board finally issued their decision in June 2022 after an investigation that lasted almost two years, I accepted the disciplinary actions recommended by my attorney. The process had been long, brutal, and complex—and I followed the legal advice I was given, even when it was painful to do so.
A few months later, in October 2022, during a new hire orientation no less, the admin of a (very large) local therapist Facebook group posted in the group making everyone aware that my license had been suspended and I was therefore removed from the group. My phone started blowing up with messages asking if I was okay—which meant so much at the time, and still does.
I decided to tell the other two members of my leadership team that day, who had just been promoted to their Director roles. They were incredibly, incredibly supportive. It was healing, honestly.
All hell then broke loose, however, because the rest of our staff rapidly began finding out before we could even make a plan to address it. They were angry, deeply upset, hurt, confused. All of which is understandable. We held open forums where they could come and talk to me about their concerns, ask me questions, whatever they felt would be helpful as they tried to process. Some decided to leave, and we supported them on their way out. But many stayed.
At that time, we made the decision as a leadership team to tell all potential new hires moving forward about my license before they accepted an offer of employment.
I was so proud of that decision, and still am. It was the first time I was saying it out loud intentionally.
Then I really got to work.
I poured myself into intensive therapy. Into leadership development. Into repair. Into healing. Into trying to find my voice again.
When I finally got the courage to leave that relationship after two and a half years, I started to come back to myself. Tiny piece by tiny piece. I was still fragile, still recovering—but I was standing. I was learning how to breathe again. I was determined to lead differently, now that I felt like I finally could.
Then the next-level burnout hit. Hard.
In the summer of 2023, I hit a wall that actually scared me. (If you know anything about trauma, this shouldn’t surprise you.)
I told my leadership team that I needed three weeks off—time to reset, to rest, to find my footing again. I felt horribly guilty even asking. Even despite my therapist actually strongly suggesting that I take 2-3 months off. Like I hadn’t earned rest. Like I should be able to keep pushing, and if I was a good leader, then I would fight through it because ‘I owed them that’ after everything they’ve held together for me.
But I went. In October 2023, I took a 10-day solo trip to Croatia.
I had been told for years that I couldn’t do things like that alone. That I wouldn’t. That I shouldn’t.
And it changed everything.
Ten days alone, in what has become my favorite place on earth. Ten days remembering who I was.
I came back still feeling like a work in progress, but renewed and ready to lead again.
And three days later—before I had even returned to work—I found out I was being sued. Myself, and my business.
By the person I had finally found the courage to leave 10 months prior.
Less than a month after that, I learned of a massive statewide insurance policy shift that would take effect January 1st, 2024. It threatened half my team’s caseloads, impacted hundreds of clients in our practice alone, and destroyed a massive portion of our monthly revenue.
I kept going.
I retained full-time benefits for my team, despite the revenue not coming in to support it.
I increased the commission percentage splits for my clinicians.
I protected everyone I could.
I protected everything I could.
I led the best I could through all of it, but shame and guilt were still front and center, which impacted nearly all of the business decisions I made.
Our revenue didn’t begin “bouncing back” until early 2025, but by then, we were doing so with some pretty massive debt that we (really, I) had amassed trying to support my team.
I drove both myself and my business (which was personally backed, anyway) into big time debt to avoid layoffs and keep paychecks high because I led with shame and guilt instead of my logical, strategic business brain.
Which, in reality, meant that I had actually protected nothing.
I didn’t do my number one job as the CEO and owner of my business—which was to protect and keep the business alive, and ensure that the decisions I make support the business being alive long-term.
In March 2025, after a brutal year and a half of depositions, motions, spending time gathering and reviewing discovery, getting emails in the middle of my work day that would take my breath away and completely derail me… the lawsuit finally settled.
I was finally—finally—going to be able to breathe. It was all finally over.
My leadership team already knew, but I told the rest of my staff the truth:
That I had been in a lawsuit.
That it was over.
That we would never have to carry license-related bullshit again.
But, some staff located the court filings. And shared them with the rest of my staff. Which I get—I probably would’ve looked, too.
(Yep, they’re public. No, I’m not ashamed anymore. My growth and my rebuild are now public, too.)
Like most legal documents, they read harshly. Honestly, they read pretty f*cking terribly, even. Full of one-sided accusations, strategically framed motions, and statements taken wildly out of context.
Because that’s how the system works. I know too much about that now.
Nearly all of my staff have decided that they are, or will be, leaving. Some of whom already have.
And in that moment, the shame started to creep back in.
For a second, I felt it. I really, really felt it. That old panic. That pull to explain myself and provide context, to plead my case, to convince people I wasn’t who the documents made me out to be.
But this time—I didn’t spiral.
This time, I stopped running.
I acknowledged how hard it must have been for my staff to see those documents. I held space for their reactions by giving them space, at their request.
But I also let go.
I can’t spend my life trying to control how people perceive me. I’ve done that for half a decade.
It’s frantic. It’s chaotic. It’s unsustainable.
And all it’s ever done is destroy me even further, and lead to even more decisions made based on shame and guilt.
I’ve learned that not everyone will understand my story.
And I’m finally okay with that.
Something changed in me during that lawsuit, and especially after that lawsuit settled.
As if someone flipped a switch.
And then it intensified when my staff started falling apart in the aftermath—when it was finally supposed to be over.
I felt grief. So much grief. I still do. Deeply.
But I also felt something else—something I hadn’t felt in years:
A refusal.
A refusal to keep apologizing for the same story over and over again.
A refusal to keep letting other people define what I should be ashamed of.
A refusal to keep leading like I owed the world an explanation.
I, alone, get to decide who I am now.
But this time? I’m telling the story myself.
There are parts of this story I’ll never be able to explain in a way that satisfies everyone—and that’s okay. Because I’ve finally stopped trying.
I used to think that if I could just explain everything the right way—if I could offer enough nuance, enough detail, enough context—then maybe people would understand. Maybe they wouldn’t judge me. Maybe I could earn back their trust, or their silence, or their grace.
I used to think I had to earn the right to lead again. That I had to perform a level of guilt and punishment that would prove I understood what I’d done.
But the truth is, I don’t have the energy to keep performing clarity for people who have already decided what version of me they want to believe. And I no longer believe that I owe people that opportunity.
I’ve done the years of hiding, of explaining, of obsessing over how this would look or what it would cost me if I told the truth. And what I know now is this: hiding cost me far more. It cost me connection. It cost me confidence. It cost me alignment. It cost me my business.
I know what I lived through. I know what I regret. I know what I’ve lost. I know what I’ve rebuilt. And I know I’m not the same person I was back then. That’s what matters to me now.
Some people will think I’m sharing this to justify myself, or see this as an act of strategic vulnerability. Some people will think this is about image control or an attempt to win sympathy. But I know my intention, and that’s what matters to me today.
I’m sharing this because silence kept me stuck in a shame spiral that impacted every aspect of my life and every aspect of my business. I’m sharing this because it took me to depths of depression that I—even as a former therapist—didn’t even know was possible. I’m sharing this because leading with self-erasure is the most brutal way to lead and to live. I’m sharing it because I refuse to keep shrinking under the weight of a story that I’ve privately punished myself for for years.
And more than anything, I’m sharing this because I hope someone hears my story and finally has a f*cking wake up call that they no longer have to do that bullshit either.
This is the foundation I lead from now. And it’s stronger than anything I ever built while hiding and playing small.
If you’ve ever felt like your past disqualifies you from leadership, I want you to hear this:
You are allowed to be powerful.
You are allowed to make money and take up space.
You are allowed to build something unapologetically you.
You don’t have to perform to be trusted.
You don’t have to be perpetually apologetic until they tell you you’ve done enough of it.
You don’t have to burn out to be ethical.
And you don’t have to do this alone.
IT’S TIME.
TO DISRUPT THE RULES. AND UNLEASH YOUR IMPACT.
There are parts of this story I’ll never be able to explain in a way that satisfies everyone—and that’s okay. Because I’ve finally stopped trying.
I used to think that if I could just explain everything the right way—if I could offer enough nuance, enough detail, enough context—then maybe people would understand. Maybe they wouldn’t judge me. Maybe I could earn back their trust, or their silence, or their grace.
I used to think I had to earn the right to lead again. That I had to perform a level of guilt and punishment that would prove I understood what I’d done.
But the truth is, I don’t have the energy to keep performing clarity for people who have already decided what version of me they want to believe. And I no longer believe that I owe people that opportunity.
I’ve done the years of hiding, of explaining, of obsessing over how this would look or what it would cost me if I told the truth. And what I know now is this: hiding cost me far more. It cost me connection. It cost me confidence. It cost me alignment. It cost me my business.
I know what I lived through. I know what I regret. I know what I’ve lost. I know what I’ve rebuilt. And I know I’m not the same person I was back then. That’s what matters to me now.
Some people will think I’m sharing this to justify myself, or see this as an act of strategic vulnerability. Some people will think this is about image control or an attempt to win sympathy. But I know my intention, and that’s what matters to me today.
I’m sharing this because silence kept me stuck in a shame spiral that impacted every aspect of my life and every aspect of my business. I’m sharing this because it took me to depths of depression that I—even as a former therapist—didn’t even know was possible. I’m sharing this because leading with self-erasure is the most brutal way to lead and to live. I’m sharing it because I refuse to keep shrinking under the weight of a story that I’ve privately punished myself for for years.
And more than anything, I’m sharing this because I hope someone hears my story and finally has a f*cking wake up call that they no longer have to do that bullshit either.
This is the foundation I lead from now. And it’s stronger than anything I ever built while hiding and playing small.
If you’ve ever felt like your past disqualifies you from leadership, I want you to hear this:
You are allowed to be powerful.
You are allowed to make money and take up space.
You are allowed to build something unapologetically you.
You don’t have to perform to be trusted.
You don’t have to be perpetually apologetic until they tell you you’ve done enough of it.
You don’t have to burn out to be ethical.
And you don’t have to do this alone.
IT’S TIME.
TO DISRUPT THE RULES. AND UNLEASH YOUR IMPACT.
YOU SHOULD
ALSO PROBABLY KNOW
01
I’M NEURODIVERSE AS HELL. (HELLO, ADHD.)
I’M A DOG LOVER. MEET MY ASSISTANTS: ROMIE & COOPER.
02
03
I LOVE ME SOME WINE.
WHITE WINE, IN PARTICULAR.
I SPLURGE ON TRAVELING—IT’S ONE OF MY FAVORITE THINGS EVER.
04
THIS IS FROM MY SOLO TRIP TO CROATIA, MY FAVORITE PLACE ON EARTH.
WANT TO WORK TOGETHER TO DISRUPT THE RULES OF LEADERSHIP?
let’s connectlet’s connect