About Mary Stephenson
I am a practitioner, coach, and facilitator with more than twenty years of experience working at the place where leadership meets the body — where what an organization can build is shaped by what its leaders can actually carry.
My work happens in three kinds of rooms: with individual leaders navigating complex transitions, with teams and organizations metabolizing significant change, and in groups and circles where people gather around shared experience.awakening to their own creativity, empathy, and the truth of their own becoming.
Whether you arrive through a corporate engagement or a quiet, personal impulse, the work remains focused on restoring the humanness and authenticity that performance depends on.
Lineage and Training
My approach integrates several strands of deep, evidence-informed practice.
Collective and Systemic Healing
Certified through Thomas Hübl's Pocket Project and the Academy of Inner Science in Collective Trauma Healing and Trauma-Informed Women in Leadership — addressing the ancestral, relational, and organizational dimensions of how we heal and lead together.
Somatic Intelligence
My 1:1 work is deeply informed by the lineage of Dr. Peter Levine and Somatic Experiencing, and by many years of sustained somatic study and practice — both as a client and as a student.
Leadership and the Inner System
A ten-year immersion with Pathwise Leadership, beginning as a student in 2007 and serving on the teaching faculty from 2012 to 2017. A deep inquiry into executive psychology and human dynamics — identifying the specific mechanics of how a leader's inner state shapes the systems around them.
Inside the Organizations I Serve
I have spent sixteen years navigating the interior life of high-stakes technology organizations. My perspective was forged during six years at Microsoft, where I observed how cultures hold or break under pressure, and how the leaders inside them quietly carry the weight of both.
Since then, I have coached leaders across many industries, including seven years as a Founding Guide at Chief — where I have stewarded senior women through the tensions of authenticity and ambition, working at the intersection of what modern leadership requires and what it costs.
Education & Training
B.A. in Journalism and Communications — Annenberg School, University of Southern California
Certificate in Collective Trauma Healing — Thomas Hübl / Academy of Inner Science
Certificate in Trauma-Informed Women in Leadership — Thomas Hübl / Pocket Project
Coaching and Facilitation Training, and Co-Teaching Faculty — Pathwise Leadership (2007–2017)
Founding Guide — Chief (7 years)
I split my time between the West Coast and New York City, working with clients globally while maintaining my own path of personal sovereignty.