The nervous system of democracy is burned out. Let’s rewire together.
What if feeling grounded could help us create a safer world? It can. With resilience training, a framework for systems change and media for a care-driven economy, we can build intergenerational wellbeing from the inside out.
I’m an award-winning journalist, systems thinker and trauma-informed coach using somatics and strategy to support inner wellbeing to make outer change.
With increasing anxiety, disconnection, and disruption, our old ways of thinking are not serving us well. By treating our nervous system as our first storyteller, we can look through new lenses and ask new questions to turn burnout into positive transformation. I help people gain an embodied understanding of the science of stress and resilience and an awareness that our personal wellbeing influences—and is influenced by—our political, social, and economic systems.
Without this foundation, we risk repeating the same problems at home, at work, in our schools, and in democracy. We need to know better to do better to feel better. Together, we can.
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Resilience Coaching
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Workshops and Retreats
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Signature Talks & Keynotes
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Crisis Consulting
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Narrative Repair
From breakdown to breakthrough
Covering the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attack.
I’ve spent more than two decades reporting and leading news teams on the frontlines of global and domestic upheaval, studying democracy, trauma, and repair from Cuba to Cambodia, Hong Kong to D.C. I worked for the Voice of America, Al Jazeera English, and The Washington Post, where the story became personal.
In 2020, the pandemic, protests, and the U.S. presidential election pushed my team — and the country — to the limit. So when a mob attacked the U.S. Capitol and swarmed me on January 6, 2021, I defused the threat with humor and humanity, but it came at a cost: Complex PTSD. My Post colleagues and I won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, a professional pinnacle — and a personal breaking point.
In time, I realized that staying inside a compromised system meant suffering trauma, burnout, and moral injury to keep telling stories about everyone else’s. I stepped away from the daily news cycle to focus on building deeper foundations for intergenerational healing.
I founded Invisible Threads, a media, education, and action hub exploring how mental health and democracy are intertwined. And as a visiting affiliate scholar at Georgetown University’s Psychology Department and a senior fellow with the Red House research and educational design unit, I co-developed The Journey Framework, a strengths-based systems change model to break cycles of harm and build lasting wellbeing.
I now work with individuals, communities, and organizations to unlock new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting to galvanize embodied resilience, strategic clarity, and democratic renewal.
Interviewing Bessel Van Der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score.
The signal is breaking through.
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Invisible Threads on Substack
A weekly multi-media newsletter about the ties between mental health and democracy — what shapes our relationships with ourselves and others.
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Seen & Heard
Media coverage and public appearances that amplify a simple truth: How we feel shapes how we live, vote, relate and lead.
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Storytelling for Systems Change
Documentary films, multi-media features and social videos about what makes us human, what tests us, and how we keep going.
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Awards & Recognition
From the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service to the Ben Bradlee Award for Courage in Journalism, these honors reflect a belief that uncomfortable truths are more essential than ever.
