About marisa
(Mah-ree-sa)
* She/Her
If you have ever felt like the most reliable person in every room – and the most disconnected from yourself – I want you to know that I understand that from the inside.
I have spent most of my life being the person others leaned on. Not because I was asked, but because I learned early that showing up for everyone else was how you earned your place. That lesson served me. And it also, quietly, cost me everything.
At 28, I left a six-figure sales career because I was disappearing inside it. I spent a year traveling the world, writing, learning what I thought and felt when no one needed anything from me. I returned home with a different set of questions. I went to Berkeley. I fell in love—not just with ideas, but with the love of my life, Christopher. I changed everything. But that wasn’t the end of the story. That was just the first shedding.
Since then, I’ve caretaken family members through illness and death. I have buried my grief in Peruvian soil. I’ve started a business while walking my mother home. I have sat with loss so many times that I have stopped being afraid of it.
And now, for the first time in my life, I truly belong to myself.
“She created a safe space for me as a woman in a way I never knew I needed until I met her.”
I am a leadership coach for women of color. I hold a UC Berkeley BA in Interdisciplinary Studies with a focus on Global Poverty, an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, and an ICF-accredited coaching certification from Fielding Graduate University. I am trained in somatics at the Strozzi Institute, in ancestral and collective healing with Thomas Hubl, and in trauma-informed voice and attachment work with Linda Thai. I have spent 15 years inside mission-based organizations—as a strategist, a fundraiser, a capacity builder, and a coach—working alongside leaders doing some of the most important and most under-resourced work in the country.
But none of that is why I can help you.
I can help you because I know what it costs to carry everyone and ask for nothing. I know what it feels like when your body is telling you something your mind refuses to hear. I know the moment you realize that what you have been calling strength was actually survival.
And I know — because I am living it now, at 53, in a classroom learning about my own mixed-race identity, doing ancestral healing work, integrating everything I have learned into something I can offer you — that coming home to yourself is not a destination. It is a practice.
I am not a coach who figured it out and is waiting for you at the top. I am a coach who is still doing the work, right alongside you, and who has enough road behind her to know which paths lead somewhere real.
my values
Integrity. Leading from truth, not performance.
Courage. Making the costly choices, not just the comfortable ones.
Racial Equity. Holding the systemic lens always, so you don't have to carry it alone.
Compassion. Meeting yourself and others with grace, especially in the hard moments.
Community. Leadership is relational. We rise together or not at all.
Wholeness. Your full humanity isn’t a distraction from your leadership. It’s the source of it.
Joy. Because transformation thrives in laughter, lightness, and genuine celebration.
my approach
Most leadership coaching starts with the mind. Mine starts with the body.
Your nervous system is the operating system for your leadership. The way you brace before a hard conversation, the shape you hold when you walk into a room, the breath you forget to take when someone challenges you — these are not distractions from your leadership. They are your leadership, waiting to be understood.
I integrate somatic awareness with evidence-based coaching tools, strengths-based practice, and a deep systemic lens. We begin with who you already are — your character strengths, your lived experience, your particular genius — and build from there. We don’t start with your gaps.
We also name what has been running silently: the belief that you earn belonging by accommodating. The voice that says your needs should come last. The hustle that was survival before it was strategy. We bring these into the light with curiosity, not judgment.
And we build evidence — a practice of tracking your wins, your breakthroughs, your own words on the days you knew exactly who you were. For the days when you forget.
Credentials & training
Education
BA, Interdisciplinary Studies, Global Poverty, Honors Distinction - UC Berkeley
MFA, Creative Writing, Social Justice Focus - Antioch University
Certificate in Evidence-Based Coaching (ICF-Accredited) - Fielding Graduate University (ICF-accredited)
Somatic & Embodiment Training
Certificate in Somatic Embodiment & Regulation Strategies - Linda Thai
Somatic, Trauma & Resilience - Strozzi Institute
Embodied Transformation - Strozzi Institute
Body=Brain Course - Dr. Amanda Blake, Embright
Integrative Life Coach from the Ethical Coaching Collective
Identity, Ancestral, & Attachment
Ancestral Healing Code — Thomas Hubl, Academy of Inner Science
Mixed-Race Identity: In-Between Worlds & Wounds — Pocket Project, Integration Lab
The Missing Pieces of Attachment Theory: A Decolonized Approach — Linda Thai
Belonging Ambiguity: An Embodied Exploration of Identity for Bi/Multicultural Bodies — Rooted Global Village
Marisa also has training in the principles of Trauma-Informed Care.