About Christine
I began my career as a scientist because I care deeply about renewable energy.
As many scientists, I wanted to do science that mattered and do work that aligned with my values and would have widespread impact. That commitment led me to spend nearly two decades at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (now the National Laboratory of the Rockies) and the U.S. Department of Energy, supporting the advancement of climate and energy technologies.
I loved the work and believed in the mission.
But over the course of my career, juggling many projects, aging parents and young children, I experienced burnout. I was ashamed that I couldn’t do it all and felt like I had failed. I had built an identity around being capable, driven, and resilient.
In the face of these challenges, I chose to explore, grow, and develop. This multi-decade journey has helped me to see that my old operating system (forcing, pushing through) is no longer the best path forward. Hard work is still at my core, but curiosity, pacing, and trust is the new operating system.
I began asking different questions:
How do we navigate funding uncertainty without operating from a place of scarcity?
How do we work and lead projects and teams through pressure without sacrificing our health?
How do we work through team conflict without letting it decrease our energy?
How do we stay centered and say no in an environment that rewards yes? And expectations keep rising?
For nearly the last decade of my time at NREL, I balanced my technical work with a parallel exploration: how to create a workplace culture that truly supports both personal and professional well being of each employee. I was a thought leader in this space at the lab and led organizational initiatives, develop leadership programs, coached other scientists and engineers, and worked to shift conversations around the integration of technical and human success.
While I learned many things, one of these lessons is that while organizational culture matters (a lot), ultimately, each of us contributes to the culture and has to build the internal capacity to navigate the system we’re in.
That realization led me to take my passion for personal growth and development a step further.
I began coaching training through the Hendricks Institute and The Colwell practice a decade ago, and am currently completing certification through the ICF-accredited Integral Coaching program at New Ventures West. I have studied neuro-linguistic programming and high-performance coaching practices and have immersed myself in learning how stress lives in the body for over a decade and how capacity can be expanded intentionally through multiple data sources.
Today, I bring my scientific background, the depth of my own growth and development, my technical and people leadership inside complex institutions, and my coaching training to support people behind the innovation.
I understand life of juggling too many things, wanting to do it all but not being physically capable of doing it all because I live it.
I care deeply about helping scientists, engineers, and innovators navigate the leap to founder in ways that don’t cost them their health, their clarity, or the people they love.
Outside of my professional work, I’m a mother, a swim coach for my daughters’ team, and someone who restores herself through movement and nature. Skiing, dancing, mountain biking, paddleboarding, and what I call “tame adventures” remind me that resilience is built both in laboratories and on trails.
I look forward to being a thought partner for those who resonate with my story and approach and are ready to do the work to reach their goals!
