About

Growing Up In Instability

Like most kids, my first experience with loss and instability came with divorce.

My parents divorced when I was five. My mom remarried quickly. We moved constantly, sometimes twice in a single school year. Evictions. New jobs. New states.

Just as I would begin to form friendships, we would leave again.

I didn’t learn stability early.

I learned how to adapt.

One day, while we were “in between houses” and living in a hotel, I walked in on my mom on the phone with a friend, saying,

“I don’t want to go to the doctor because I am afraid of what they will find."

I didn’t understand the weight of that sentence at the time.

A few months later, after moving back to Minnesota, the phone rang on Thanksgiving. My mom had collapsed at a restaurant.

The next day, she was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer.

Four months later, days before her 43rd birthday, she died.

I was thirteen.

And I made a decision.

Education would be my way out.
Work would be my anchor.
Leadership would be my proving ground.

Identity in Motion

When my mom died.

It was my first experience with an overnight identity shift.

I was no longer just a daughter.

I was a girl without a mom.

That changes how you see the world.

Over time, I began attaching identity to what felt stable.

My education.
My career.
My performance.

For more than a decade, my identity became my work.

Then life kept shifting.

I became a mother.
I lost my dad.
I was no longer someone’s daughter.
I became a single mom.
Then a coach.
Then a stepmom.
Then I lost my grandparents and realized I no longer had living ties to my parents.

Thirty-one years after losing my mother to breast cancer, I heard the same diagnosis

Different outcome.
Same reckoning.

Titles changed.
Roles changed.
Seasons changed.

And for the last several years, I’ve had to ask a harder question:

Who am I without the titles?

Because when everything familiar falls away, identity becomes the work.

And resilience is no longer something you admire in others; it becomes something you practice.

Executive Experience

Before stepping onto stages to teach this work, Angie spent two decades living it inside some of the most recognizable companies in the world.

She held executive leadership roles at Tesla, Best Buy, Starbucks, and Under Armour, leading teams of 400+ through hyper-growth, restructuring, and large-scale operational change.

That experience became the foundation for When the Ground Shakes™, a framework built not from research, but from the rooms where the pressure was real.

Keynote speaker on leadership under pressure and disciplined resilience
Former executive at Tesla, Best Buy, Starbucks, and Under Armour
Led multi-state teams of 400+ through growth, restructuring, and mass layoffs
Founder, Transformation Leadership Labs
20+ years partnering with senior leaders through instability and identity shifts
Based in the Greater Washington, DC Area

The story behind When the Ground Shakes™

I've lived what I teach.

Growing Up In Instability

Identity in Motion

When my mom died.

That changes how you see the world.

Then life kept shifting.

That question deepened my work.

Because leaders struggle not only when organizations shift, but when identity shifts.

That's When I Realized

The most important stability a leader can build isn’t external.

Executive Experience

Leadership isn’t tested when things are stable.

If your organization is navigating disruption, transition, or pressure, and you need your leaders to stay steady through it, let's talk about bringing this work to your next event.

The story behind When the Ground Shakes™

I've lived what I teach.

Growing Up In Instability

Identity in Motion

When my mom died.

That changes how you see the world.

Then life kept shifting.

That question deepened my work.

Because leaders struggle not only when organizations shift, but when identity shifts.

That's When I Realized

The most important stability a leader can build isn’t external.

Executive Experience

Leadership isn’t tested when things are stable.

If your organization is navigating disruption, transition, or pressure, and you need your leaders to stay steady through it, let's talk about bringing this work to your next event.

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