My Story

Hi, I'm Andy. I'm a life transition coach, spiritual guide, and writer.

For most of my adult life, I was driven, capable, and successful, and I felt at home in the relentless pursuit of more achievement.

I spent nearly two decades building a career in the tech industry, most of it based in Silicon Valley. I was an early employee at several generation-defining companies, where I held various roles in growth, product, and marketing. I went on to hold senior leadership roles at one of the most recognizable names in financial technology, eventually serving as President of Wealthfront, which is now a publicly traded company on a US stock exchange.

Later in my career, I was a founding partner of an early-stage venture capital firm, where I invested in companies such as Robinhood and Webflow. I was also an advisor to several large technology companies and spent time as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Greylock Partners, a top-tier venture capital firm led by Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn.

From the outside, it looked like exactly the kind of life a person builds toward. The proximity to power, professional recognition, and the potential for great wealth are what others in the tech industry and I worked relentlessly toward. What I didn't know then was that the identity driving all of it had been built a long time before Silicon Valley, and it had its roots in several difficult childhood experiences, including the death of my mom from mental illness when I was ten.

When I was young, I was struggling emotionally and relationally, but succeeding made me feel good. So, without realizing it, achievement became my drug and my purpose.

For decades, it worked remarkably well.

But somewhere in my late 30s, something shifted. The professional achievements kept coming, yet they felt less and less resonant and meaningful each time. I tried taking on greater responsibilities to counter the waning enthusiasm for the life and career I was living, yet my inner discontent swelled.

What I know now is that I was in the early stages of an identity transformation and that I needed to resolve old traumas that I had been silently carrying for decades. I left Silicon Valley not because I had a plan, but because something in me refused to stay and urged me through a silent voice that kept repeating: “Your time here is done. It’s time to let go. You don’t need to push yourself like this anymore.”

It was one of the most disorienting and frightening decisions of my life. I was walking away from everything I had built, everything I knew how to be, and a large amount of wealth I was on the verge of obtaining. Yet I listened to the relentless inner voice that was begging me to move on.

And that's when everything fell apart. I fell into depression and deeper into numbing out, eventually leading to my decision to spend 45 days in an addiction recovery center. My career was over, my old friendships were drifting apart, I was lonely, and a deluge of childhood trauma was coming to the surface. So, I committed to doing the work to repair myself.

That work meant learning to decondition my mind from destructive patterns and from parts of my old identity that no longer served me. It was slow and often disorienting. And it was necessary.

Then, in early 2021, something opened. A spontaneous spiritual awakening, unexpected and undeniable, that irreversibly reorganized how I understood myself and the world. It was followed by a series of extraordinary experiences, including some of the most difficult of my life, that continued to dismantle my old identity and make way for a new sense of self to emerge.

I've spent the years since learning to understand what happened, studying the alchemy of personal transformation, and finding language for it. I trained as a coach and a spiritual guide. I deepened my knowledge of the contemplative traditions that understood how to guide each other through life's major transitions. And I spent several years researching tools and methods for healing mind, body, and spirit.

I began writing about my experiences and working with organizations at the intersection of mental health and spirituality. I also began working with others who were standing at the same threshold I had once stood at: successful on the outside, undone on the inside, and undergoing a major identity transformation.

I know this territory from direct lived experience.

If you're in the middle of it, the uncertainty of leaving behind who you've been and the slow and disorienting emergence of who you're becoming, I'm here to help.