The Person Behind TreeLight LifeStyles

I've never believed a title or a single moment defines a person. Every life is a full story.

Mine includes being a daughter, a mother, a wife, and now a widow. I've celebrated wonderful chapters, navigated difficult ones, and learned firsthand that life doesn't always follow the path we imagined.

I also know what it means to build something for yourself. I worked full time while putting myself through college and went on to build a career spanning corporate, nonprofit, public-policy, and community engagement, from Washington, D.C. to New York.

I spent 15 years at a major financial services company, where my work was on the operational side of the business, spanning event management, strategic planning, and project management. I learned to manage complexity, anticipate challenges, bring people together, and turn strategy into action.

I was responsible. I worked hard. I had built a career and a life I was proud of. So I assumed I understood more about my own financial life than I actually did.

That realization was humbling. Being accomplished, responsible, and even surrounded by financial services doesn't necessarily mean you've had the opportunity to understand what you need to know about your own financial life.

I didn't know what I didn't know.

Then life changed in an instant. My husband died suddenly, not after an illness or a period when we knew we should prepare, but in circumstances no family should have to experience. At the very moment we were trying to comprehend an unimaginable loss, we were also left without the financial safety net our family needed.

Sometimes we recognize that a conversation needs to happen, but finding the right time—or the courage—to begin can be difficult.

I learned that some conversations are worth having before we're ready to have them. Not because we can control what life brings, but because having them sooner can leave us with more choices when life does happen.

My community work has reinforced something equally important: meaningful change rarely happens from a distance. It happens when we meet people where they are, listen to what matters to them, bring people and ideas together, and turn conversation into something tangible.

Today, as a financial professional and educator, I bring those experiences together at TreeLight LifeStyles: what I learned professionally, what I learned personally, and what life taught me I still needed to understand.

Because behind every financial conversation is a real person, a real family, and a much bigger story.

That's where I believe the conversation should begin, because everyone deserves the opportunity to understand their choices and build with intention.