TOSCA Coaching and Consulting

Website

TOSCA Coaching and Consulting Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from TOSCA Coaching and Consulting, San Francisco, CA.

Keynote Speaker, PCC | I help leaders stop leading from their wounds and start leading from their power | 25+ yrs at Unilever, Kimberly-Clark & Univision | Host of The Unlock Lab podcast

09/23/2026

My client Kathleen admitted a huge realization in the process of building her own business. She realized that her business was asking for a new level of personal exploration and growth that she genuinely did not expect to have to do.

Wheeew lawdy, aint that the truth!

When you commit to growth in a meaningful way, it means you WILL hit a wall, and that wall is your own resistance.

You could possibly misinterpret this as evidence that you’ve chosen the wrong path, or that you’re not built for this direction. But I think it’s the opposite actually. I think that it’s a sign that you’re at the ‘edge of glory’ as Lady Gaga might say. Because if you weren't at the edge of your own growth, there would be nothing to resist.

Resistance is a confirmation that where you are standing now is the precursor to getting somewhere new.

** This clip comes from a real coaching interaction, from part 3 of a 6 session journey with my client Kathleen. To find out how she manages through her layoff and life transition tune into The Unlock Lab podcast:

🗝️ Live Coaching Kathleen 3 (of 6): Facing Your Limiting Beliefs

Please note: I am not a therapist, and do not hold those credentials. I am a Professional Certified Coach accredited through the ICF, MBA, spent 20+ years in corporate and 8+ years as an entrepreneur, and have a whole lot of life experience under my belt. These are the tools I draw on in my coaching to help my clients get unstuck and become their own best friend.

09/22/2026

My client Kathleen was begrudgingly applying for jobs while she was also building her own business (which she enjoyed much more). When I asked her what her come-from place was for those job applications, she was honest about it. It came down to one question: how much, or how little, is this going to suck.

So we spent part of session #3 exploring other ‘hats’ she could put on that might feel a little bit less like ‘debby downer’. Because the energy you are in (especially when you’re doing things you don’t want to do) has an impact on the outcome.
This is not about pretending to love something you don't, and it’s certainly not about faking it. You’ll still have thoughts that say ‘this is awful and I hate doing it.’ The opportunity is in noticing those thoughts and choosing to put a different hat on. Perhaps one hat says “I'm curious who I'll meet in this process”. When you tune in, you’ll learn more about how to do this 9-box exercise for anything that you’re bringing a negative attitude to.

** This clip comes from a real coaching interaction, from Part 3 of a 6 Session journey with my client Kathleen. To find out how she manages through her layoff and life transition tune into The Unlock Lab podcast:

🗝️ Live Coaching Kathleen 3 (of 6): Facing Your Limiting Beliefs

Please note: I am not a therapist, and do not hold those credentials. I am a Professional Certified Coach accredited through the ICF, MBA, spent 20+ years in corporate and 8+ years as an entrepreneur, and have a whole lot of life experience under my belt. These are the tools I draw on in my coaching to help my clients get unstuck and become their own best friend.

These were two of my senior pictures in high school. Who WAS this girl?This 17-year-old loved bugs bunny and playing bas...
09/21/2026

These were two of my senior pictures in high school. Who WAS this girl?

This 17-year-old loved bugs bunny and playing basketball. She worked hard, studied harder and was a ride or die friend to anyone in her orbit. She hated to look in the mirror, hated romantic comedies, and questioned the status quo. She was hella hard on herself, and while she put on a face of optimism and positivity, inside her heart broke every day.

Four years later I was in the waiting room for what was supposed to be my second to last cosmetic surgery. Up until that moment I had thought that if I looked just a bit more like everyone else, my life would be better. I was a nervous wreck waiting to be wheeled in for surgery when I had a flash of insight; this was going to be my last one. In that moment I knew that one more surgery was not going to mend my broken heart. I realized that being truly happy was going to require something much deeper.

30 years later and I can say I have walked a path towards the feeling of internal freedom and happiness. I re-wrote my own playbook at every turn, learned how to be my own best friend, and I started to say yes to support along the way.

Why do I share?

I share because you may be in a situation where you think the odds are stacked against you. You may have so much damn resistance to your own self-love that you wonder how could it possibly help anything? I'm here to tell you that change is possible, even if you don't know how.

The life you have dreamed of is within your grasp if only you dare to keep it alive.

Your journey of adversity is not where the story starts and ends - it's the source of your courage for the era of joy you are ready to call into your life. These times do not ask you to accept what is, but rather invite you to trust your knowing that things can be better. These times ask you not to pay lip service to what you want, but to take small, micro actions that lead you down the path your heart is calling you to take.

I hope you don't ever give up on the younger version of you where hope, optimism and determination were alive and well. I certainly haven’t given up on that version of you. 😘

09/18/2026

The first session that I had with my client left her completely wiped out and we talked about it in her second session.

Kathleen described it as feeling drugged, depleted, and flattened for the rest of the day. She wasn’t upset about it and admitted that nothing had gone badly, she just could not function, and didn’t quite understand it.

I’ll share with you what I told her because while we may hope to feel lighter in the journey of transformation, it usually takes a few steps to get there.

When you’re doing healing work, when you’re doing deep transformative work, it doesn’t shift by staying in your head and ‘figuring out’ how to get unstuck. The goal is not for you to think your way to a clean answer. When your body has a physical response to a conversation that’s not a cause for concern, it’s beautiful evidence of a deeper impact.

When something finally comes up to be seen, or heard, or released, it can feel heavy on the way up. Even the release can feel like weight. And sometimes, the heaviness is about the fact that your truth is truly out in the open for the first time, as was the case for Kathleen.

If you tune into the entire conversation you’ll start to undersatnd how the depth of our conversation could have created this physical reaction.

I’ve personally experienced different modalities where I feel exhausted afterwards - including after a massage. And while I can’t always pinpoint the why, what I’ve learned is that the energetic movement in my body is a huge WIN.

** This clip comes from a real coaching interaction, from Part 2 of a 6 Session journey with my client Kathleen. To find out how she manages through her layoff and life transition tune in:

🗝️ Live Coaching Kathleen 2 (of 6): The Fear Underneath the Fear of a Major Career Shift

09/17/2026

How do you choose between a path that feels suffocating but abundant, and a path that feels uncertain, but more expansive?

This is how my client Kathleen (name changed for privacy) was feeling when she came to me after having been laid off a few months prior. I had the privilege and honor to support her over the course of six sessions, which she agreed to be recorded for the podcast. Our conversations spanned from financial fears, to fear of the unknown to worthiness and resistance to celebration and trust all in the context of life throwing a curveball that put her life on hold.

There were no scripts or pre-planned discussion points; these are real coaching sessions that you have a chance to bear witness to. What you’ll discover is what it takes to move from fear to forward movement, and in the process I think you’ll gain a few tools for your own toolbox to get unstuck in your personal or professional life.

Tune in for the transformation and to discover your own unlock wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts:

The Unlock Lab Podcast
BONUS EPISODES (1-6): Live Coaching Sessions w/ Kathleen

09/17/2026

Maybe you think you don’t have a choice but to keep moving forward in the muck of what life has thrown your way. So you dismiss when people look at you and say dang - you’re strong, you’re brave, you’re doing it.

This is exactly what happened in my conversation with my client Kathleen in our first session. She was laid off months ago and has been weighing her options for what to do next. It felt hard and stagnant.

But I had to stop her in that narrative because the truth is that there are a lot of people who would never not in a million years allow themselves to sit in the chair across from me and look at the corners of her life that cause the tension, the heartache and the worry.

In our conversation she said it feels like this (situation) chose me more than I chose it. But that dismissed the fact that she was not taking life laying down. She was facing it constructively. She didn’t have to say yes to this coaching, or being recorded for that matter. While life threw her a curve ball, she deserved credit for every day that she got up and faced another day.

Don’t diminish the choices you’re making. Sitting in the discomfort of what you don’t understand or know yet IS playing an active role.

** This clip comes from a real coaching interaction, from Part 1 of a 6 Session journey with my client Kathleen. To find out how she manages through her layoff and life transition tune in:

🗝️ Live Coaching Kathleen 1 (of 6): Navigating Career Options Post Layoff

09/17/2026

Do you believe that you deserve what it is that you want?

Answer this question with a number. On a scale of zero to ten; zero being you don’t feel you deserve it at all, and 10 being give it all to me I am more than worthy.

Where do you land?

This is the exact question I asked my client, Kathleen in our second session because I guessed that she was telling herself that she wasn’t even on the scale at all of feeling worthy of everything she wanted. She went quiet for a long time, and then she said five.

I jumped for joy!! YESSS!!! Thank you!! You are not at ZERO!

Before that question she had been describing herself as someone who is not allowed to have what she wanted. She felt that she could have some of what she wanted, but never all of it. That was her reason for the five, in her own words. She recognized that she could have at least some of it.

That number 5 is evidence that there is a part of her that does feel worthy, and it’s a starting point worth celebrating!

I did not try to talk her into changing that number at all because that’s not the point. You can’t cheerlead someone into feeling they are in a different place. Instead, I asked what it would take to move from 5 to 5.1, and then we hit some resistance. But oh boy that resistance took her somewhere she needed to go, and you have the inside view to exactly where.

** This clip comes from a real coaching interaction, from Part 2 of a 6 Session journey with my client Kathleen. To find out how she manages through her layoff and life transition tune in:

🗝️ Session 2 of 6: the number that shows you where you actually are.

09/16/2026

Is everything up in the air right now in your life? If so, have you decided this is a huge problem because it’s creating overwhelm, walking in the dark and uncertainty?

I have good news; it’s a blessing in disguise. The reason why is because previously you had a life puzzle that was all laid out in a beautiful picture that you understood and found solace in. You were living by that picture, and it worked, until something busted it all apart and every piece came loose. And when those pieces land, they’re gonna to land in a different picture, which is exactly the point.

Think about this; creating a NEW picture from the one that already exists is even harder than building a new one out of pieces that are still in the air.

In a session with my client Kathlene this is the metaphor I shared because she was trying to force seeing a new picture without looking at the pieces one by one. It’s the forcing that creates the overwhelm.

The pressure to have it all figured out by Friday is not going to help you move towards clarity, in fact it perpetuates the feeling you’re likely trying to move away from.

What you can do instead is pick up one puzzle piece at a time. Seek to understand it, but don’t try to place it down and see the picture it creates. The puzzle piece can be acknowledging the conversation that drained you, the project that lit you up, and the hobby that you long for.

The bigger picture will come with time, and the challenge in this moment is to notice what you’re holding in this moment. And please don’t fret because my dear, you are exactly where you’re meant to be.

** This clip comes from a real coaching interaction, from Part 1 of a 6 Session journey with my client Kathleen. To find out how she manages through her layoff and life transition tune in:

🗝️ Live Coaching Kathleen 1 (of 6): Navigating Career Options Post Layoff

09/16/2026

I hear these things all time:

"We should grab lunch."

"Let's set up time."

"Sure, I'll make that intro for you."

And then, just like on a summer evening in Vermont, I hear crickets.

If you're wondering what your leadership growth edge is, skip the personality tests and ask: Am I the kind of person who does what I say I'm going to do? Or am I the kind of person with a laundry list of reasons why I didn’t do it?

I know it's harder for some of us than others. Focus challenges are real, capacity is real, and life genuinely does happen.

But "I was so busy" is a cop-out, standard-issue excuse. And every time you use it, you're damaging your reputation, which will cost you a lot more, and take a lot longer to recover from than you realize.

Follow-through is a skill you can improve upon and if being trustworthy matters to you, start focusing on actioning your commitments.

09/15/2026

You give yourself every freaking reason why your dream isn’t possible. Maybe it sounds like ‘I can’t make money doing what I love’ or ‘I can’t reach that goal because I don’t even know how’, or ‘I can’t have this AND that, I have to choose.’

You are not the only one! In fact, my client Kathleen was blocking possibilities before the idea even had the chance to touch the damn ground! And look, I know this game very well myself.

Kathleen admitted that this habit came from her orientation of wanting to feel in control. So of course, wanting something that is in the space of unchartered territory does not help her control anything. So what happens instead? She focuses on what she THINKS is actually attainable because she can see the entire roadmap to get there. And all this is, is one big fat story that she’s been telling herself for so long enough that it started to sound like the truth.

You’ve got to do something different and think something different when all your brain wants to do is block you from disappointment. That something different is spending time with what you DO WANT without giving a moment to the ‘how’ of it. Without giving any space to the doubt or the fear.

** This clip comes from a real coaching interaction, from Part 2 of a 6 Session journey with my client Kathleen. To find out how she manages through her layoff and life transition tune in:

🗝️ Live Coaching Kathleen 2 (of 6): The Fear Underneath the Fear of a Major Career Shift

Address

San Francisco, CA
94104

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when TOSCA Coaching and Consulting posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share