How Sarah-Neel and Grace Left the Rat Race, Claimed Their Voices, and Earned More

I work with smart women and marginalized leaders who are skilled, under-appreciated, and allergic to office politics. They don't want to become jerks to get ahead. They want to grow their income and impact without drama or compromising their integrity.

In this post, I want to share two client stories — Sarah-Neel and Grace — that show what's possible when you:

• Build self-advocacy skills,

• Reclaim your sovereignty, and

• Sometimes leave the corporate rat race altogether.

Each of them started in a place of frustration and feeling overlooked. Each of them ended up growing their income and impact on their own terms.

Sarah-Neel: From Toxic Academia to Six Figures and Her Own Income Stream

When Sarah-Neel first came to me, she had done everything "right." She has a PhD in art history and was working as a professor. But she felt unfulfilled, overworked, and underpaid in a toxic academic environment.

Her career had become a kind of hostage situation. She'd invested a decade and hundreds of thousands of dollars into becoming a professor — a classic sunk cost fallacy that made pivoting feel nearly impossible.

At the same time, she had big financial goals, and a higher-income job was a big part of the plan.

Sarah's initial struggles before coaching:

• Afraid to leave the "safety" of her role despite the toxicity

• Unsure how to communicate her value outside academia, even though she excelled at learning new skills as a lifetime learner

• Lacking confidence in workplace negotiations and advocating for her future potential

In coaching, we focused on helping her vote for herself. She:

• Decoupled her self-worth from a toxic workplace's opinion of her

• Owned her transferable skills instead of downplaying them

• Grounded herself in a clear-eyed, sovereign view of her own value

Once she rebuilt her confidence and started reaching out, everything changed. She:

• Conducted informational interviews that opened doors to brand-new opportunities and fruitful connections

• Pivoted into brand-new fields — twice

• Negotiated a 7% pay increase in her first transition

• Then negotiated a 50% pay increase in the next role

• Secured a six-figure position and launched her own independent income stream as an informational interview strategist

Grace: Turning a Rejected Idea into a Seven-Figure Path

Grace's story starts in a different place. She was a burnt-out entrepreneur who had gone back to the corporate world, hoping it would feel safer and more stable.

Instead, she found herself:

• Running circles around people above her pay grade

• Exceeding every performance metric

• But still being micromanaged by less competent managers

• Hustling "out of spite" as a stress response

• Discovering she was underpaid compared to peers, even though she was bringing in more money to the firm

On top of that, she had a brilliant business idea. When she shared it with leadership, they basically said, "Nah, it's not going to work."

Through coaching, we worked on all three votes — for herself, with her tribe, and with her feet:

1. She decoupled her worth from her employer's limited vision. Their inability to see value wasn't proof she didn't have it.

2. She negotiated a pay raise by assigning work to her CEO — essentially telling him to go find more budget for her. He did.

3. She realized, "If they can't see this seven-figure idea, I can build it myself." And she did.

4. She reached out and closed deals with clients who acknowledged the value of her offer and willingly paid her for it 

The result? She quadrupled her salary and started building the business her employer couldn't recognize — using her own sovereign judgment.

Sarah-Neel and Grace didn't wait for a tiara to be placed on their heads. They voted for themselves first — then, when the moment called for it, they voted with their feet and voted with their tribe, building the connections and relationships that blew the door open to what came next.

In the process, they became their own bosses, grew their self-advocacy skills, and made more money than the systems they left ever imagined for them.

If you see yourself in Sarah-Neel or Grace, you don't have to figure out your three votes alone. Book a free 1:1 consultation and let's map out what casting them could look like for you.