About Me

Hi, I'm Ingrid. I'm a family and ADHD coach in Petaluma, California — but that's my second career.

For thirty years, I worked in local government. I helped small businesses get off the ground and grow. I worked to make government make sense to ordinary people, coordinated teams across departments toward goals nobody could reach alone, and built the communications and technology systems that held it all together. At the time I called it economic development, or communications, or IT.

Looking back, it looked a lot like coaching — even when we didn't call it that. The work was always the same underneath: helping people find their footing in a system that felt impossible, and building a path forward one workable step at a time.

The part that isn't on my résumé

I'm also a mom and stepmom to four kids, each one their own person, each one who struggled and succeeded in their own way.

I know what it's like to sit across from a school that has opinions about your child. I know the late nights reading about diagnoses and medication and wondering if you're getting any of it right. I know the Tuesday mornings that fall apart before 8am, the ones nobody else sees. And I know the particular loneliness of loving a kid who's having a harder time than other kids seem to — and not knowing how to help.

That experience is the reason I do this work. Not as a theory I studied, but as a road I walked.

How I got here

When I left public service, I went looking for the most rigorous training I could find, because I didn't want to offer parents good intentions. I wanted to offer them something that works.

I'm certified as an ADHD coach through the ADD Coach Academy (ADDCA), which trained me in the science of how attention, motivation, and executive function actually work — and how to translate that science into something a parent can use on a hard morning. I'm a certified Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) instructor, an evidence-based program developed by psychologist Dr. Thomas Gordon that teaches families how to listen, communicate, and resolve conflict without anyone having to lose. And I'm a credentialed professional coach through the International Coaching Federation (ICF), the global standard for the profession.

Those credentials matter. But the one most parents care about is the one that says I've sat where they're sitting.

What I believe

I believe most parents are doing far better than they think, with far less help than they deserve.

I believe a struggling child is almost never a bad child, or the product of bad parenting — usually it's a kid whose brain works differently trying to survive a world built for a different kind of brain.

And I believe in being honest about what I do. I'm a coach, not a therapist, and I'll always tell you when you need one. I'll never pretend a quick fix exists, and I'll never let you walk away thinking the hard parts are your fault.

If something at home feels off — whether you have a diagnosis or you're still searching for answers — this is a place to start.