About James

I did not come to coaching through a book. I came to it through a life. I learned to manage myself as a brand long before it was a career. When I moved into brand strategy as a profession, the work felt natural — because I had been doing a version of it for myself my entire life. For 25 years I made my way through that work — across agencies, corporate brands, non-profits, and founder-led companies, working with leaders across six countries — building a career on the very performance I had been refining since childhood. It worked. It also cost me more than I knew. What I had been carrying through all of it took me longer to recognize. I grew up as a closeted gay child in a fundamentalist Christian world. From as early as I can remember, I understood, at a level beneath language, that who I actually was could not be allowed into the room. The collapse, the unwinding of all that, is a longer story I tell on humankind.work. What matters here is what I came out the other side knowing.The deepest work in leadership is the same work in two places. It happens in the rooms, with founders, CEOs, leadership teams, when the conversation moves past the deck and gets honest. And it happens inside the leader, in the harder, quieter work of allowing yourself to actually be the person you are. Those are not two different jobs. They are the same job, in two rooms. That is what real leadership is. Strategy and skill don't close the gap between who leaders are and who they perform themselves to be. Honesty does — outside, with the team, and inside, with yourself. I'm CPCC-certified, an iEQ9 Leadership Practitioner, and the founder of humanKIND. Based in Toronto and Prince Edward County. My partner David and our shared life with our dogs Luna & Keystone are what help ground me while I do this work.