About Emili
HOW IT ALL BEGAN
My Story
I know what it feels like to give everything — professionally, personally, emotionally — and still feel like you're falling behind. To keep scanning for the thing you missed, the small tweak that will finally make it click, while the answers stay stubbornly out of reach. I spent years looking for it outside of myself before I understood: the clarity I needed was only ever going to come from within. That realization didn't just change how I live. It became the foundation of how I work.
Across industries, I've sat alongside leaders who were empty. Depleted by years of high performance, invisible load, and relentless forward motion with no room to look inward. Capable, committed, and quietly running on nothing. What they needed wasn't advice. They needed a mirror.
My role was to build the relationship and the space where that mirror could exist — where a leader felt safe enough to really look, curious enough to stay with what they saw, and ultimately courageous enough to answer questions they had never thought to ask themselves. The courage was always theirs. I just made it possible.
Bennett Strategic Leadership isn't something I decided to build. It's something that became inevitable — the natural arrival point of every engagement I've held, every leader I've watched walk out of fog and into clarity, every moment where the real work finally had room to begin.
If you're the person doing the invisible work — capable, driven, and wondering when it will finally feel like enough — you don't need to be fixed. You need space to evolve into the leader and the person you are proud to be. Not the version others are waiting for. Yours.
That's the work. And you don't have to do it alone.
Evolution doesn't begin on the outside.
It begins the moment you stop asking what's wrong with you —
and
start designing who you're becoming.
Professional Background
Before Bennett Strategic Leadership, I spent two decades in rooms where the stakes were high — most recently as Vice President of Leadership Development at Bryant Group.
Higher education is my home turf. At Bryant Group, I helped shape and grow a leadership development practice serving universities, health systems, and mission-driven institutions across the country — and led RISE, a program developing the next generation of women leaders in advancement. Earlier, I served as an executive coach and organizational development leader through Indiana University's $4B Bicentennial Campaign, and led career and professional development across the university's 760,000-member alumni community.
That work reaches well beyond higher education. I've coached executives and leadership teams at Fortune 150 companies — PepsiCo, Eli Lilly, Salesforce, Oracle — and government institutions including the FBI and the U.S. State Department.
Different sectors, one constant: the leaders I work with are capable, committed, and carrying more than anyone can see. My job is to help them carry it better — without losing themselves in the process.
SOME DAYS, THE GOAL IS SIMPLE: FOLLOW JOY.
On a Personal Note
My husband, Lance, and I built a life around international adventures long before our daughter, Miriam, came along — now we’re excited to show her the world too (we’re slowly filling up our national parks passports together). Long Michigan winters mean you’ll find the three of us skiing or planning the next ski trip; spring and fall are for hiking, and come summer, we’re growing local produce and not leaving the lake.
Miriam is the best part of most days — school pickups, popsicles on the patio after swim lessons, the two of us figuring things out together. The best way I’ve found to explain what I do to her: I help leaders be braver, smarter, stronger, and kinder.
When there’s time left over, you’ll usually find me getting lost in the kitchen — cooking often feels like its own quiet act of kindness. I also find peace in watercolor painting (mostly fruit and plants), building Lego flower bouquets, doing the NYT daily puzzles, and Taylor Swift playlists.
CHIEF HAPPINESS OFFICER
Also On Staff
Quinoa. Lab, Co-Worker & Shadow.
Released from Canine Companions service training for "inappropriate vocalization." He barks in public. He knows what he wants and isn't afraid to say so.
We consider that evidence of the right hire.
