I Didn't Start as a Consultant.

I Started on the Manufacturing Floor.

​

Before I founded, We Optimize Work, I was an Industrial Engineer and Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, primarily focused on developing and implementing continuous improvement and employee engagement solutions in corporate, manufacturing, and global logistics environments for over a decade.

​

I was also a working mother of four. Navigating competing priorities with cross-functional teams, skeptical supervisors, and employees who had seen change initiatives come and go without ever being asked what they thought taught me things no boardroom ever could. Having direct experience as a frontline employee early in my career, I learned the importance of equipping the roles directly impacted with proper engagement, the tools to succeed and systems that highlighted how their expertise contributed to transformation at work.

​

Change doesn't happen top-down. It happens person-by-person, in the trenches, with the people closest to the problem.

​

I watched consultants walk into organizations with their frameworks already built and their cookie-cutter training that did not relate to how people were actually operating or relate to the processes they followed .They would engage at the leadership level, sit with executives who were equally removed from the day-to-day reality of their workforce, and act on what leaders assumed was the problem rather than finding data that confirmed it. When the plan was introduced, it had already overlooked the opportunity to show employees why their role was relevant to the change being asked of them. 

​

Without authority, without a senior title, and often without anyone asking me to, I started building systems. I developed programs that equipped employees to lead their own transformations as active contributors with the tools, language, and confidence to identify problems, propose solutions, and carry change from within.

​

At one organization, a continuous improvement initiative had launched with less than 25 percent employee engagement. Within the first year of rebuilding from a people-first, readiness-first approach, we reached 95 percent program adoption within six months of implementation and saved $1.74 million at a single plant in the first year. The following year, those savings doubled.

​

The change readiness infrastructure I built was adapted by our CEO at a global scale, creating systems that made it easier to do business through employee-led transformations, not mandated ones. When employees understand their role in change and feel genuinely equipped to engage, the whole organization moves differently. I influenced multi-million dollar improvements without a single direct report. 

​

If I could accomplish that without authority, without executive sponsorship, think about what happens when an organization is proactive in how they engage their employees.

When leadership is not just aligned at the top but is actively building readiness across every level, simultaneously. When employees are developed to be critical problem solvers who understand exactly how to contribute their skills to supporting a transformation from where they are. Most organizations are still sending 100 percent of their development investment to the 33 percent of their workforce in formal leadership roles. That means the 67 percent who are implementing the change, the project managers, the team leads, the subject matter experts, the frontline employees who decide every day whether to engage or resist, are left without the infrastructure they need to succeed. 

​

Employees do not need to be motivated. They are already watching TEDx talks and listening to motivational podcasts. What they need is a system that channels their motivation into aligned action at work. Your opportunity is in ensuring that change stops feeling like something that happens to people and starts becoming something they are genuinely part of.

​

I did not become a consultant to replicate what was already being done. I became one because I spent over a decade as a professional watching well-resourced organizations fail at change. Their people were never given clarity on how their role was relevant, or access to a process that made it safe to confidently contribute their ideas and expertise toward change. Now, with 17+ years of combined experience as both a professional and practitioner in this space, I continue to stand behind this belief: you are the key to making work feel good while leading a company-defining change, and I am here to support your success.