Work With Annie: Executive Coaching for Driven, Ambitious Women
If you’ve tried traditional executive coaching and found that the frameworks evaporate the moment the pressure spikes, this is for you. Annie’s trauma-informed executive coaching addresses the nervous system — the actual source of your professional blocks — rather than just your behavior or strategy. It’s for driven women who are ready to lead from a genuinely grounded place.
When Professional Success Is a Survival Strategy
For many driven women, professional success is not just about ambition — it is a survival strategy.
If you grew up in an environment where love was conditional, where chaos was the norm, or where you had to be the “adult” in the room, your nervous system learned a very specific lesson: Safety comes from being indispensable, perfect, and in control.
You took that biological blueprint and built a magnificent career with it. You became the person who can handle any crisis, solve any problem, and outwork anyone in the room.
But that survival strategy has an expiration date.
Eventually, the “fawn” response that made you a great team player turns into an inability to set boundaries. The hypervigilance that made you detail-oriented turns into paralyzing perfectionism. The drive that got you to the C-suite turns into chronic, bone-deep burnout.
“In my blind need to be seen as hyper-capable, ultra-dependable, that girl who can handle anything, I’d built a life I could no longer handle. My to-do list drove me like an unkind taskmaster.”— Shauna Niequist, Present Over Perfect
You don’t need another coach to tell you to “lean in” or “hack your productivity.” You need a coach who understands the biological cost of your success — and who can help you rebuild your proverbial foundation so you can lead from a place of genuine safety rather than chronic threat.
If any of this resonates, learn more about trauma-informed executive coaching or connect with Annie’s team to apply for a consultation.
Somatic refers to the body-based dimension of psychological experience — recognizing that trauma, stress, and emotional patterns are not only stored in the mind but encoded in the tissues, muscles, and nervous system. In plain language: your body keeps its own record of your history. When you freeze in a board meeting, lose your voice with a critical boss, or feel physically sick on Sunday evenings, your body is communicating something your mind may have learned to ignore. Somatic coaching works with that body-level data rather than trying to override it with logic.
Annie’s Clinical and Entrepreneurial Background
Annie is uniquely positioned to do this work because she lives at the intersection of clinical trauma expertise and high-level entrepreneurship.
The Clinical Expertise: Annie is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and a Relational Trauma Specialist. She has spent over a decade studying the nervous system, polyvagal theory, and the somatic imprint of childhood adversity. She understands exactly how early relational blueprints dictate adult behavior — AND how to change them.
The Entrepreneurial Reality: Annie is also the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multi-seven-figure clinical practice in Berkeley, California. She has hired, fired, managed payroll, navigated board dynamics, and scaled a company from the ground up — then executed a successful exit. She knows what it feels like to carry an organization. She does not offer theoretical business advice. She offers biologically grounded, battle-tested strategies for women who are actually in the arena.
Polyvagal theory, developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, describes how the autonomic nervous system has three distinct states: ventral vagal (safe and connected), sympathetic (fight or flight), and dorsal vagal (shutdown). In plain language: it explains why you can be completely competent in one context and unable to speak in another — your nervous system state determines your access to your own intelligence, creativity, and strategic thinking. Leading from a regulated state is not optional for sustainable performance; it’s biological.
FREE QUIZ
The invisible patterns you can’t outwork…
Your LinkedIn profile tells one story. Your 3 AM thoughts tell another. This quiz reveals the childhood patterns keeping you running — and why enough is never enough.
TAKE THE QUIZ →The Coaching Methodology: Brainstem AND Boardroom
Annie’s trauma-informed executive coaching model is rigorous, structured, and highly customized. It works simultaneously on two tracks: the Brainstem (your nervous system) and the Boardroom (your leadership strategy).
1. Somatic Regulation (The Brainstem). The engagement begins by mapping your specific nervous system responses. When the board challenges you, do you go into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn? A customized toolkit of somatic practices — breathwork, grounding, visual shifting — is developed for use in the moment, keeping your prefrontal cortex online when the pressure spikes.
2. Relational Repatterning (The Bridge). The specific childhood blueprints driving your professional blocks are identified and addressed. The connection between your early relational history and your current leadership patterns is made explicit. Worth is untangled from output. The shame associated with your survival strategies is removed, allowing you to finally put the armor down.
3. Strategic Execution (The Boardroom). Once your nervous system is regulated, high-level executive strategy is applied. Difficult conversations are scripted. Sustainable delegation systems are designed. A leadership architecture is built that supports your well-being rather than extracting it.
The Six-Month Executive Engagement
Because rewiring the nervous system requires time, consistency, and deep trust, Annie works with executive coaching clients in comprehensive, six-month engagements.
The 6-Month Executive Engagement Includes:
- Deep-Dive Intake: A comprehensive 90-minute initial session to map your professional landscape, your relational history, and your specific nervous system baseline.
- Bi-Weekly Strategy Sessions: Two 60-minute sessions per month, conducted via secure video, focusing on real-time professional challenges and somatic regulation.
- Direct Somatic Support: Priority email and voice-note access between sessions. When you are dysregulated before a major presentation, you have direct access to Annie for real-time somatic grounding — not a two-week wait until the next session.
- Customized Resources: Curated clinical frameworks, leadership scripts, and somatic exercises tailored specifically to your neurobiology.
Is This Right for You?
Annie takes on a strictly limited number of executive coaching clients each year. This ensures she has the clinical and energetic capacity to provide the highest level of support.
This engagement is an excellent fit if:
- You are a senior-level woman leader (Founder, C-Suite, VP, Partner, or equivalent).
- You have a history of relational trauma, childhood adversity, or chronic stress.
- You have tried traditional coaching or therapy and felt it didn’t fully address the intersection of your ambition and your anxiety.
- You are ready to do the deep, sometimes uncomfortable work of examining your biological survival strategies.
This engagement is NOT a fit if:
- You are looking for basic resume review or interview prep.
- You are in active, acute clinical crisis (e.g., severe depression, active addiction) that requires a primary, local therapist.
- You are looking for a “quick fix” or a purely cognitive productivity strategy.
Apply for a Consultation
If you are ready to stop outworking your trauma and start leading from a regulated nervous system, the first step is to apply for a consultation.
During this 30-minute call, your specific professional challenges will be discussed, your current nervous system state will be mapped, and the fit for this specialized modality will be assessed together.
A: Yes. Because this is executive coaching (not clinical psychotherapy), Annie is able to work with driven women internationally via secure video. The somatic and relational work translates fully to the virtual format — in fact, many clients prefer the option of working from their own environment, where they can be most honest about what’s actually happening in their lives.
A: In Annie’s clinical therapy practice, the primary goal is diagnosing and treating mental health conditions. In executive coaching, the primary goal is optimizing your professional leadership and career trajectory, using trauma-informed tools to remove the biological blocks in your way. Many clients work with a therapist in parallel for deeper, open-ended processing while working with Annie specifically on the leadership dimension.
A: A consultation is still worth having. In some cases, the right first step is therapy to stabilize the nervous system before taking on the deeper leadership work of coaching. Annie will be honest with you about the right sequence and can make appropriate referrals. Your readiness matters more than urgency.
A: Many clients do. Executive coaching is often eligible for corporate professional development funding, CME stipends (for physicians), and continuing education budgets. Ask your HR or CFO. Annie’s team can provide documentation to support reimbursement requests.
A: Most executive coaches work exclusively at the behavioral and strategic level — the prefrontal cortex. Annie works at the nervous system level first. This means addressing the biological reason your excellent strategies don’t execute under pressure, rather than just adding more strategies. The result is sustainable, embodied change rather than better performance that collapses when the stakes are highest.
- van der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps the Score. Penguin Books, 2014.
- Porges, Stephen. The Polyvagal Theory. W.W. Norton, 2011.
- Thomas, Tamu. Women Who Work Too Much. Hay House, 2023.
Annie Wright
LMFT · Relational Trauma Specialist · W.W. Norton AuthorHelping driven women finally feel as good as their résumé looks.
As a licensed psychotherapist, trauma-informed executive coach, and relational trauma specialist with over 15,000 clinical hours, she guides driven, ambitious women — including Silicon Valley leaders, physicians, and entrepreneurs — in repairing the psychological foundations beneath their impressive lives. Annie is the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she built, scaled, and successfully exited. A regular contributor to Psychology Today, her expert commentary has appeared in Forbes, Business Insider, Inc., NBC, and The Information. She is currently writing her first book with W.W. Norton.
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