Depending on the room, I’m called a facilitator, strategist, coach, or systems thinker—but underneath all of that, I’m aggressively curious.
I believe every choice somebody makes, they make it because they think it’s the right one. My work is about making sure distortion isn’t quietly shaping what “right” means.
Depending on the room, I’m called a facilitator, strategist, coach, or systems thinker—but underneath all of that, I’m aggressively curious.
I believe every choice somebody makes, they make it because they think it’s the right one. My work is about making sure distortion isn’t quietly shaping what “right” means.
Hit a goal and felt oddly underwhelmed?
Doubled down on a belief that you never pressure-tested?
Changed your mind — and wondered why you were so certain before?
Followed “best practices” that worked… but didn’t fit?
We make thousands of decisions everyday.
Not all of them are sliding-door moments. But enough of them are that they have the potential to shape the course of our lives.
They can determine who we become, how we lead, what we build, and how we relate to the people around us. And they are all built on
assumptions that may or may not be accurate.
When we operate on inherited beliefs, mistake certainty for clarity, or defend ideas we never actually examined, we may have free will, but
not true self-authorship.
I want to help you see what’s underneath — so the choices you make are truly yours.
We make thousands of decisions every day. Most pass quietly without much thought. But some are sliding door moments, the ones that have the potential to shape the course of our lives. They can determine who we become, how we lead, what we build, and how we relate to the people around us. And they are often built on assumptions that may or may not be accurate. When we operate on inherited beliefs, mistake certainty for clarity, or defend ideas we never actually examined, we may have free will, but not true self authorship. I want to help you see what is underneath, so the choices you make are truly yours.
7 Year-old me, with my first “big girl” haircut
I’ve always been interested in how people decide what things mean. How quickly we label. How confidently we assume. How rarely we stop to ask whether we’re actually seeing clearly.
This may or may not have something to do with the fact that I moved schools a lot as a kid. You learn quickly, when you’re the new person, how fast people categorize you. A look. A story. A single word. And once a label sticks, it shapes everything that follows.
I watched good ideas get dismissed because they sounded like something someone had already decided was wrong. I watched friendships never start because of assumptions that were never examined. I did it too. We all do. We carry our past into the present and call it clarity. These experiences kept bringing me back to something a priest told our class when I was 7: that Mother Teresa was selfish.
The word hit hard. Selfish is usually a verdict. It means “bad”. But he wasn’t condemning her — he was pointing out that her work brought her deep personal satisfaction. Looking back on that, I realized that words carry weight because we assign it to them. And we build beliefs, relationships, and strategies on top of that weight. It’s not surprising that I eventually built a career around helping people slow down long enough to see what’s actually true.
I’ve always been a little bit of a nerd. I get a lot of joy from creating rubrics and formulas that are repeatable in order to free up my mind for more rubrics and formulas down the line. I guess you could say that efficiency is my love language.
Which is why when I saw this sign in my co-worker’s cubicle early in my career it became a motto of sorts: “Why don’t we have time to do it right, but we have time to do it over?”
As I joined larger organizations as an HR professional, I saw this being played out at scale. It seemed that so many of these systems were built on heuristics with shaky foundations and assumptions that weren’t proven out. Assumptions not just about the system, but about individuals, as well…all underpinned with unclear communication.
Seeing this operate at scale gelled my observations into clear beliefs:
This kick-started my passion to build systems, decisions and actions from clarity, free from distortion—well, at least as free as we could manage. With an understanding that clarity is a practice, and true agency only grows through continual refinement and inquiry.
So while my job was about working within those systems, that’s when I began exploring clarity, distortion, the different types of distortion, and how to help people make better decisions that keep them aligned.
“I care deeply about clarity. It goes beyond efficiency. I care because it impacts how people perceive and are perceived by the world.”
I’ll say it again – Every decision that someone makes, they make it because they think it’s the right one. But darned if sometimes those decisions aren’t built on distorted information.
We all have biases, social programming, proven methods, best practices, or a million other things that create blindspots or distortions that get in the way of clarity. The question is “how do we know”. They don’t call them blindspots for no reason.
You don’t have to have a background in HR or be a trained coach. You don’t even have to be a leader in an organization. You just need to set the right conditions: Open Neutrality
Now, curiosity is key—and I hate to bait and switch you here—but it’s only 1/3 of the equation. Open neutrality is comprised of three elements:
Amanda’s perspective didn’t emerge in isolation. It was shaped by years of work across systems, psychology, and organizational design.
Amanda has worked across publicly traded conglomerates, private equity environments, family-owned global enterprises, high-growth startups, and large multinational operations. In organizations ranging from hundreds to over 200,000 employees, she served as an HR co-pilot and strategic partner to senior leadership.
Working across these ownership structures taught her that incentives quietly shape behavior — and behavior quietly shapes what gets labeled as “right.” What appears to be culture is often architecture. What appears to be misalignment is often unexamined assumption embedded at scale.
Her certifications as SPHR and SHRM-SCP grounded her in the formal mechanics of human capital strategy, while her CCMP and Prosci training sharpened her understanding of structured change. But experience taught her something those credentials alone could not: clarity must precede transformation, or rework becomes inevitable.
Throughout her career, Amanda has led large-scale restructures, post-acquisition integrations, and multi-year people strategies. She has designed competency models, rebuilt talent pipelines, stewarded engagement turnarounds, and architected organizational realignment across geographies and business units.
These experiences reinforced a structural truth: systems succeed or fail based on the assumptions beneath them. When incentives contradict identity, no amount of performance pressure resolves the friction.
Her formal training in System Dynamics strengthened this view. Feedback loops, second-order effects, and structural reinforcement patterns revealed that distortion is rarely dramatic — it is systemic.
Amanda holds a Master of Education in Leadership and Organizational Performance from Vanderbilt University. Her graduate work deepened her inquiry into how leaders construct meaning, how organizational narratives shape behavior, and how decision frameworks influence long-term outcomes.
Rather than offering static answers, her academic training refined her discipline of questioning. It reinforced that clarity is not instinctive; it is developed through examination, iteration, and intellectual humility.
Amanda’s thinking is heavily informed by adult development theory and behavioral science. The work of Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey reshaped how she understands the socialized mind and the process of self-authorship. Daniel Kahneman’s research on cognitive bias and heuristics reinforced the fragility of first impressions. Jonathan Haidt’s exploration of moral intuition deepened her awareness of how judgment precedes reasoning.
These influences converged on a central insight: gut reactions are signals, not truth. Traits are often moralized unnecessarily. Certainty feels persuasive — but it is not always accurate.
Understanding identity as developmental, and bias as structural rather than moral, reframed her view of agency. Choice without clarity is often conditioned reaction.
As an ICF-credentialed coach, Amanda practices structured inquiry in real time. Coaching sharpened her ability to hold Open Neutrality — the combination of curiosity, constructive skepticism, and compassion — while leaders examine their own assumptions.
Coaching reinforced what enterprise systems had already shown her: clarity cannot be forced. It must be surfaced. And it requires an environment where premature judgment does not shut down examination.
Amanda approaches both individuals and organizations as systems. Her training in System Dynamics and structural feedback modeling deepened her understanding that outcomes are rarely random — they are the product of interacting variables over time.
Instead of asking “Who failed?” she asks, “What structure produced this result?” Feedback loops, incentives, identity, communication, and environment are not isolated forces. They interact. When distortion appears repeatedly, it is often embedded in the structure itself.
This lens allows her to move beyond blame and into architecture — designing for clarity rather than reacting to symptoms.
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