I spent more than twenty years as a lawyer - derivatives, hedge funds, global banks, the whole high-stakes production. I was good at it. I built something I was proud of.
And then life did what it tends to do: it handed me a season that required a completely different version of me. I became a caregiver, an executor, a homeschooling parent during a pandemic, and eventually, an entrepreneur. Not in that order, and never one at a time.
What I’ve learned from living all of that, and from throwing a lot of parties along the way, is that the moments that matter most to people aren’t the big career wins. They’re the celebrations. The dinners. The gatherings that remind us who we’re doing all of this for.
That’s why I built Swankey, and that’s what I talk about when I speak: what it really looks like to reinvent yourself without losing yourself, lead under pressure, and build something meaningful when the path isn’t clear or linear.
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My mother loved to celebrate people. Any occasion, no matter the size, was worthy of celebration. I internalized her philosophy completely. Even in the thick of a demanding legal career, I was still the one throwing the parties. It was how I stayed connected to what and who mattered.
When she died, I stopped. For the first time in my adult life, I just didn't have it in me. Two years passed. It happened to coincide with the pandemic, which gave my grief and the stillness a kind of cover because nobody was gathering anyway.
Then grief started to loosen its grip, right around the same time the world was beginning to open back up. People were hungry to gather again. And I found myself wanting to host again. And I rediscovered, in real time, that the tools available to plan an event ranged from "overwhelming" to "you're going to need a second spreadsheet for the first spreadsheet." I'm a lawyer. I have a high tolerance for complexity. Even I was frustrated.
That's when the idea landed. Not in the middle of loss, but on the other side of it, when I had enough space to look up and notice a problem nobody even acknowledged, much less solved. The answer was Swankey. Built for people who want to celebrate well, without the chaos that usually comes with it.
I’ve spent my career in rooms where the stakes were high and the margin for error was low. Hedge fund boardrooms. Bank trading floors. Real estate closings where everything was on the line. I learned how to read a room, manage risk, and stay calm when other people couldn’t.
I also grew up watching “Perry Mason” reruns and decided at age seven that I was going to be a lawyer. So there was never really a plan B, until my entire world turned upside down and inside out.
Today I run Swankey, which I founded after decades of legal practice and a personal season that changed everything I thought I knew about what work should look like. I speak about reinvention, leadership presence, and the kind of risk management that has nothing to do with contracts and everything to do with your own next chapter.
If any of that sounds like your audience, let’s talk.
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