Meet Raphaela

My personal story underscores the force that propels me to do the work I do today.  As a Life and Career Coach, I know that if you are stagnating and unhappy in your life then everything else around you suffers.

I took a pretty standard path in life: I received my Bachelor’s degree, my Master’s degree, and worked for a few nonprofit organizations, working my way from the bottom to the top. I started out as a Case Manager, and then promoted to Supervisor, Program Administrator and finally became Director of an organization providing oversight to organizations across the city.  After a while, I began feeling like a jack of all trades but master of nothing at all.  While I encountered some great co-workers and had a great salary, I wasn’t happy.

Moving forward, No looking back

While it seemed I had it all, I was also engulfed in non-stop work/projects, meetings at the office and more and more work spilling into my home life daily.  As a parent, single parent at that, this felt like a heavyweight.  A weight that kept me out of balance between home and work life, overly stressed and unhappy to say the least and becoming more and more miserable within myself.

I kept thinking: “So many people would want a position like this? The money, the connections, the opportunities for growth. Am I giving this thing here a chance?”

Underneath all of that, I was deeply afraid that maybe I was stuck since I’ve always worked in nonprofit leadership for well over a decade. I thought to myself, “Maybe there was nothing else out there I could do. I thought maybe program/youth development and nonprofit leadership was the only thing I was cut out for and thought I would be a failure if I tried anything else”.