Psychologist · Executive Coach · Advisor · Thinking Partner
Psychologist & Executive Coach
Seventeen years inside the science of psychology and neuroscience, eleven of them in professional practice, brought to bear on how founders and executives lead, decide and carry weight. I work with leaders, founders and CEOs on every inhabited continent, from Fortune 500 companies to emerging ventures and foundations.
Recognition, media & training
Psychological science on one side, product and technology on the other. My clients live at that intersection, and so has my career.
Award
A nationwide innovation and technology competition run by Her Global Impact in collaboration with Singularity University. Ideate, design, move fast, pitch, win. The prize was a scholarship to study innovation and technology in Silicon Valley.
Silicon Valley
Living on site at NASA Ames alongside winners from dozens of countries. Intensive work on design, prototyping, team building, hiring, go to market, finance, business models, pricing and strategy, aimed at the world's sustainability and impact goals.
National press & television
Interviewed by leading national newspapers and television on bringing technology into a part of healthcare that has been notably resistant to the collaboration.
The real constraint
You are good at this. That's not in question.
You've built the company, made the hard calls, carried teams through things that would have broken other people. Your judgment has been tested and it has held.
So when something starts to strain, when the decisions get heavier, the isolation gets louder, and the same conflict keeps reappearing with a different face, you do what has always worked. You push harder. You optimise. You add another system.
And it doesn't move.
It doesn't move because the constraint isn't in your strategy. It's in the part of you that built the strategy. The patterns that made you successful are the same ones that eventually cap you, and by definition you can't see them from the inside. Nobody can. That is what a blind spot is.
This is the work I do. Not therapy. Not motivation. The psychology underneath the leadership, made visible, made usable, made yours.
Even when the data runs out and the room is waiting on you.
In any market, any culture, any room, without losing yourself in the translation.
Without it quietly carrying you, your health, or the people at home.
With someone who has no stake in your cap table and no agenda in your company.
The framework
How do leaders stay sharp when the pressure never lets up, the stakes keep rising, and the room keeps changing?
Range is what lets you move between registers without losing yourself: decisive in the board meeting, open in the one-to-one, calm in the crisis, honest in the mirror.
Most leaders have one register they are excellent in and three they avoid. The avoidance is invisible to them and obvious to everyone else.
Range is trainable. That is the whole premise of my practice.
Model 01
Range begins here. Between the challenge that overwhelms you and the one that bores you sits a narrow band where attention, capability and difficulty align. Leadership work is largely the work of staying in it, and of noticing early which side you have fallen off.
Mountain View, California
Four roles, one person
Most people you can hire are one of these. The work only gets interesting when someone is all four.
As a psychologist, I understand the currents underneath a decision: the patterns you cannot see because you are standing inside them.
As an executive coach, I work on the leading itself. The board, the co-founder, the team, the call you have been postponing for six weeks.
As an advisor, I sometimes simply tell you what I think. I have helped a lot of companies and built things myself, and there are moments when the useful thing is not another question but a straight opinion you can go and test. Not to obey. To try.
As a thinking partner, I care about you rather than everyone in your organisation. A creativity partner and a sounding board with eleven years of doing precisely this and refining the craft. Some weeks I believe this is the most valuable of the four.
I also know product, strategy and go to market, and I will not stop a business conversation to ask how that makes you feel.
Trusted by leaders on every inhabited continent
The people I work with span company size, industry and continent. Their names are here. Their employers are not.
I never name a client's employer without asking first, and most ask me not to. Confidentiality is not a policy here. It is the product.
This is the first testimonial I have ever given, which should say enough about the weight of Pilar's impact. Too often, I find people who tell or talk at, rather than elicit from me. Pilar showed up with both the compassion to hold space but also to gently guide to arrive at self-revelatory moments.
For years, I had been grappling with my business model, feeling stuck and uncertain about the next steps. Without hesitation, I wholeheartedly recommend Pilar's services as a business coach.
Pilar has provided me the hope, the structure, the tools out of my raw potential to create my first business. She has business acumen, street smart intelligence and creative pragmatic ideas.
Beyond the one to one
Leadership teams, conferences and cohort programmes, in English or Spanish, in several countries.
Work with me
One to one
All four roles in one relationship: psychologist, executive coach, advisor and thinking partner. Three months to begin, because that is the minimum honest amount of time for real change, then month to month for as long as it is useful.
For groups
Applied psychology for leadership teams, conferences and cohort programmes. Delivered live, in English or Spanish, anywhere in the world.
Results to expect
Made from judgment rather than fear, and made faster.
The kind people can feel in a room and calibrate to in a crisis.
Rooted in who you are, not in last quarter's numbers.
Not the fast food version that fades by Tuesday. Actually satisfied with the life the work is buying you.
