Sarah Williams
Studied at Missouri State University
Worked at Atlassian
Available tomorrow
Starting at 5:30 PM UTC
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About Sarah
I’m Sarah Williams, a leadership coach for high-achieving women in tech who are ready to be recognized, promoted, and trusted as leaders—without burning out. Before coaching, I spent 15+ years in tech moving from systems analysis into senior leadership, leading global, remote-first teams and AI/ML initiatives (including two patents pending). Along the way, I learned that the hardest problems were never technical—they were people problems: visibility, communication, confidence, and navigating messy, political environments. Today, I help senior ICs and managers in male-dominated spaces turn their “invisible” impact into visible, promotable leadership. My clients have earned promotions at big tech companies, stepped into larger scopes and new orgs with confidence, and rebuilt their self-trust after layoffs and difficult work environments. We work together to clarify what they want next, translate their work into clear business outcomes, and build the visibility, executive presence, and communication skills that make decision-makers pay attention. My coaching is collaborative and grounded in modern cognitive psychology frameworks. I’m a Socratic Coaching Method Certified Coach, which means I won’t tell you who to be or hand you a generic playbook. Instead, I’ll ask powerful questions, share practical tools, and partner with you to find strategies that fit your values, context, and life—so the results you create are both real and sustainable.
Why do I coach?
Coaching matters to me because it’s the thing that changed my life when I felt the most stuck. Years ago, I was hitting wall after wall in my tech career—rejections from roles I wanted, draining interpersonal dynamics at work, and a constant sense that I was “supposed” to be further along by now. I started to wonder if maybe I just wasn’t cut out for the kind of leadership I wanted. Working with a therapist and then with coaches introduced me to modern cognitive psychology and feminist coaching tools that helped me see myself and my career differently. Those tools helped me overcome a lifelong struggle with depression, interview with more confidence, navigate office politics, and ultimately step into senior leadership roles and lead global teams. What I realized through that process is that so many high-achieving women in tech are not held back by a lack of talent or work ethic—they’re held back by invisible stories, messy environments, and a lack of truly supportive spaces to process it all. Coaching gave me that space, and it’s why I do this work now. I coach because I want my clients to have a place where they can be fully honest, be deeply believed in, and build the skills and self-trust to create careers that actually feel good from the inside, not just impressive on paper.
Work Experience
Founder, Coach
Williams Coaching
March 2026 - Present
Williams Coaching is a leadership coaching practice for high-achieving women in tech who want to be recognized, promoted, and trusted as leaders—without burning out. I specialize in career growth, executive presence, and navigating transitions (new roles, org changes, layoffs) with clarity and confidence. As Founder and Coach, I work primarily with senior individual contributors and managers in male-dominated environments to help them get visible for the impact they’re already delivering. Together, we translate their work into clear business outcomes, build simple “visibility systems” that fit their schedule, and practice the conversations that matter most—performance reviews, promotion packets, skip-levels, and high-stakes meetings. I am a Socratic Coaching Method Certified Coach and a former Senior Manager in tech with 15+ years of experience leading global, cross-functional teams. I bring a blend of modern cognitive psychology frameworks, practical leadership tools, and deep empathy to every engagement so clients feel fully supported and fully in charge of their own path.
Principal Technical Program Manager
Atlassian
August 2025 - March 2026
As a Principal TPM (VoC), I led the programs, and the people, that turned customer pain into product strategy. Principal Technical Program Manager leading multi-product, AI-driven programs that reduce customer friction and deliver $1.9M+ in support cost avoidance. Extensively using customer insights to drive product roadmap delivery and improve customer experience. Own cost-avoidance delivery for multiple products (Atlassian Guard, Identity, Admin Experience, and Jira Align), guiding Engineering teams to deliver $1M+ in customer support cost avoidance through bug fixes, delivering customer suggestions, and usability improvements. Lead a cross-functional program to design and deliver agentic AI solutions that streamline complex administration-related support workflows, increasing Support Engineer efficiency and targeting $900K in annual support cost reduction.
Senior Manager/Manager, Technical Program Management
Atlassian
March 2024 - August 2025
Promoted to lead Technical Program Management, Voice of the Customer for Agile DevOps Cloud (Jira, Jira Align, Bitbucket, JPD, Compass), accountable for reducing customer friction, driving cost avoidance, and scaling team ways of working globally. Own cost-avoidance strategy for Agile DevOps Cloud products, guiding Technical Program Managers and Engineering teams to deliver $5.4M in customer support cost avoidance (0.9/1.0 KR attainment) through bug fixes, delivering customer suggestions, and usability improvements. Managed a global team of 7 Technical Program Managers (VoC), consistently earning 100% manager effectiveness in team satisfaction surveys and increasing “team connection” scores by 26 points. Led usability and friction reduction programs that delivered >$2M in support cost avoidance and surfaced $1M+ in additional opportunities through deep dive analysis into customer friction, SEQ testing, and product roadmap commitments. Created and facilitated global team offsites, weekly team rituals, and cross-team initiatives that improved connection while maintaining high collaboration and delivery standards globally.
Principal Technical Program Manager
Atlassian
July 2021 - March 2024
Principal Technical Program Manager, Voice of the Customer owning AI/analytics initiatives to uncover customer friction and drive product friction reduction and cost avoidance at scale. Led initiatives that transformed how Atlassian uses AI/ML and LLMs to analyze support tickets and usability friction, with an estimated 195% ROI and $1.58M+ in product usability commitments. Built and deployed a binary classifier that showed 52% of support volume could be self-served, identifying a $14.25M opportunity to improve product usability and deflect support tickets. Delivered LLM support ticket theming capabilities including scaled summarization, speed improvements, and semantic search, enabling faster, more accurate friction analysis across large datasets. Partnered with Data Science, Operations, and Program Management to prioritize sprints, manage resourcing, and present findings to executive audiences, influencing investment
Senior Systems Analyst (Manager)
Missouri State University
August 2018 - July 2021
Lead a team of eight Systems Analysts by providing mentoring, coaching, performance evaluation/improvement, and team vision. The team supports software development and acquisition projects for all major areas of the university. Serve as IT representative on committees to acquire new software in support of strategic university initiatives. In addition, provide IT leadership on project teams for major ($1 million+) software implementation projects. Implement business process improvement initiatives with cross-functional teams including improvements to the ERP upgrade process and developing a project request system and process for prioritizing requests by consensus among various university divisions. Serve on numerous search committees Extensive experience presenting to large groups and senior leadership Extensive experience leading projects throughout the project lifecycle in both Agile and Waterfall methodologies Extensive experience with business process improvement Extensive experience building relationships and collaboration among cross-functional teams
Systems Analyst
American National
September 2015 - April 2018
Act as project manager for large-scale IBM Business Process Management workflow project involving cooperation across development teams in a distributed environment. Played an active role in each aspect of the project lifecycle: initiation, planning, execution, and closure. Introduced agile development methods to the IBM BPM workflow development team. Act as scrum master by leading daily standups, sprint planning, and sprint review. Create and maintain documentation to support IBM BPM workflow development. Translate user requirements into user stories, acceptance criteria, and business rules. Communicate this information to development team utilizing Microsoft Team Foundation Server and SharePoint. Communicate project vision to a cross-functional team in a distributed environment. Work effectively with individuals from a variety of disciplines in various geographic locations around the United States. Complete quality assurance testing and coordinate user acceptance testing on new IBM BPM workflow application development projects
Business Analyst
Forvis
February 2015 - August 2015
Education
Missouri State University
Master of Science (M.S.), Computer Information Systems
2013 - 2015
Missouri State University
BS, Recreation and Leisure Studies
1999 - 2002
Activities and societies: Golden Key Honor Society
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