Runner, Writer, Traveler, and Outdoor Party Host
For the past two decades Sandra has helped executive leaders accelerate progress toward their equity and social impact goals. After holding a variety of leadership roles within the philanthropic sector, she began a career as an independent consultant and coach in 2019. She is certified through CoachDiversity Institute. She believes in the power of women’s leadership, influenced by her formative years in a female headed household, a history of collaborating with strong women leaders, and her experience as a working Mom.
As a leadership coach, Sandra creates trusting relationships that support client growth, mindset transformation and opportunity. Her coaching practice helps women leaders, across racial and cultural identities, increase their organizational impact. Sandra’s passion is coaching leaders that struggle with bringing a vision – whether it is an organizational vision, a work/life vision or a community vision – to fruition. Her focus as a consultant compliments this strategic intent. She helps leadership teams and boards align plans and approaches with desired impact. As a thought partner and facilitator, she helps groups strengthen strategic thinking to deepen impact over time.
Sandra brings a DEI lens to coaching on topics such as inclusive leadership and identity, equity-focused strategy development, stakeholder management, project implementation and values alignment. She is an Advanced Practitioner in Emergent Learning, and uses this framework to help both individuals and teams learn deliberately around complex social problems in order to improve results. Her professional experience spans multiple philanthropic contexts, including foundations, direct service nonprofits, public policy advocacy organizations, management consulting organizations, and collaboratives.
Her commitment to social justice is life-long. It is shaped by early experience with setbacks, by community-engaged work as well as by extensive intercultural experiences and time abroad. She has a dual graduate degree from the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.