Lived experience is not a footnote. It’s a framework!
I work with healthcare, life sciences, and mission-driven organizations to integrate lived experience into strategy, education, and partnerships — so it actually drives decisions, not just storytelling.
Surviving something should change how systems are built — not just how stories are told.
Trusted by Leaders in Healthcare, Advocacy, and Organizational Strategy
How I work
Strategy & Partnerships
I work alongside leadership teams to shape direction, structure initiatives, and build partnerships that actually function. This includes coalition development, advocacy strategy, and helping organizations navigate complex relationships across sectors.
Speaking & Communication
I speak, facilitate, and help shape how organizations communicate in high-stakes environments — from clinician education to policy and advocacy settings. I also work behind the scenes to prepare leaders, advocates, and lived experience experts to show up clearly and effectively.
Training & Coaching
I recruit, train, and support lived-experience experts, advocates, and leaders — helping them use their voices with clarity, credibility, and impact. I also offer select one-on-one coaching for individuals navigating transition, leadership, or lived-experience-driven work.
Resiliency is Vanessa’s Superpower!
As a speaker, adversity coach, patient advocate, and found of the non-profit Living After Crisis Inc., Vanessa has spoken frequently in front of crowds of 3K+, facilitated difficult conversations for Fortune 500 companies, and supported hundreds of individuals to overcome personal health, and career challenges.
In my book, Make Room for Joy, I use my story of cancer, betrayal, abandonment, and grief as a tool to encourage readers to choose hope, take a leap of faith, and make room for joy no matter what's going on in life. Each chapter ends with a Make it Personal section, which helps readers embrace the connection between suffering and joy and experience a new kind of joy that is impossible to contain and easy to share.
Selected Partnerships & Features
Feeling stuck, under-motivated & hopeless?
Life’s disruptions have a way of stealing our focus, our clarity, and our joy. This is normal. But moving forward takes grit and determination – and it won’t always be fun. It’s hard to keep going after a major disappointment. It’s hard to stay focused and contribute amid a shifting personal and professional landscape.
Deconstructing, how crises or circumstances have changed/halted your life is an essential step to thriving after the crisis. I help people evaluate how their physical, emotional, and professional spaces impact their ability to move forward. I work with people to clarify the question, “What Next?” and help you create a plan to move forward with clarity, confidence, and joy.