Stephanie Dunn Coaching

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Stephanie Dunn Coaching You already know where you want to go and can't explain why you're not moving. The question underneath is quieter: who am I to want this?

Executive and leadership coaching, devoted to women at real inflection points. The Next Best Choice · ICF Our focus is effective communication, leadership skills development, team building + strengthening and transition coaching. We are based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I found this in Volcano, California, a town I instantly fell in love with. I know the joke is old.The part that isn’t: S...
10/14/2026

I found this in Volcano, California, a town I instantly fell in love with.
I know the joke is old.

The part that isn’t: Superman still needs somewhere to take the cape off.

This month’s Out Loud is about having somewhere to be exactly as you are, where you are. The link is in the comments.

A woman tells me what she wants. Plainly, with no drama. Something she has known for a while.Then, within seconds, she t...
10/09/2026

A woman tells me what she wants.

Plainly, with no drama. Something she has known for a while.

Then, within seconds, she takes it back.

She says it is small. She says other people have it worse. She often does not notice she has done it.

What I notice is that she said it at all, out loud, to another person, maybe for the first time.

I do not read the retraction as doubt.

I read it as protection.
If she judges the sentence first, nobody else gets the chance.

But the sentence was already in the room.
It was true when she said it, and it was still true when she took it back.

Is there a woman in your life you thought of while reading this?

I keep baskets ready so that when guests visit, I can invite them out to the orchard to enjoy apples and figs, picked an...
10/04/2026

I keep baskets ready so that when guests visit, I can invite them out to the orchard to enjoy apples and figs, picked and eaten right off the tree.

I do it for the peacefulness. You cannot rush it, and nothing is being asked of you while you do it.

This time it was my eldest son and me.

It reminds me of my work.

My work is a place where women say out loud what they have known for a long time.

So here is something small to try. This week, find one hour somewhere that asks nothing of you, and go there on purpose. Then notice what you think about when no one is waiting on an answer.

Where would your hour be spent?

09/21/2026

Hooray, James is home!

Our daughter Lexi's boyfriend is in the Navy and flew home to San Diego today after a 10-month deployment in the Arabian Sea.
He has just a few days off and then he is back to work.

Lexi shared this sweet video of their dog Kai greeting him at the airport.

We are so grateful for his safe return.
If we had tails we'd be wagging them too!

Sometimes I think I should have picked one lane and stayed in it.Corporate, probably. Not because the work would have be...
09/09/2026

Sometimes I think I should have picked one lane and stayed in it.

Corporate, probably. Not because the work would have been better. Because I would have looked more successful.

I don't apologize for the career I've had. I was educated for entomology, for a life in scientific study, and I've spent it in public relations, publishing, marketing and sales. I've sat on boards. Every turn brought me something I'd have missed on a straighter line, and I knew it at the time.

That's me sitting in Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes W07 Hybrid Formula 1 car which took him to 10 Grand Prix wins in the 2016 season.
My work led me to the opportunity to take that seat.

So the doubt was never really about the path.
It was about how the path reads.

Women say a version of this to me constantly.

She tells me she isn't sure her background is right for what she wants next. Listen closer and she isn't questioning her experience. She's questioning whether it counts.

That's the wait. She's waiting for someone else to confirm what she already knows.

The permission isn't in your history, and it isn't in anyone reading it.

You're not waiting for it. You're withholding it.

You've been waiting on a signature only you can sign.

I did not expect a goose to be the best part of my weekend.Our host handed me one of their Sebastopol geese to hold and ...
08/27/2026

I did not expect a goose to be the best part of my weekend.

Our host handed me one of their Sebastopol geese to hold and it turned out to be a feather pillow that wanted to be cuddled.

I stood there laughing like a kid. No agenda, nothing to get right, just an unreasonably soft bird and about four good minutes of paying complete attention to one thing.

I spend my weeks asking people to slow down enough to notice what's in front of them.

It was nice to be reminded I'm not exempt.

That's my husband John in the photo, sharing the moment with me. We were guests at Gabriela and Carlos Forte's Bee LaForte Agroforestry Farm for Gabriela's birthday.

Thank you Gabriela and Carlos for a day I felt in my heart.

Realist. Pessimist. Overthinker.I hear these words constantly, almost always from women describing themselves.They're ra...
08/19/2026

Realist. Pessimist. Overthinker.

I hear these words constantly, almost always from women describing themselves.

They're rarely descriptions. They're verdicts, delivered early, so nothing else has to be risked.

A woman tells me she's just being realistic about her chances.

Look closer, and she's reading the situation accurately. This role has capped out. That person was never going to promote her. She's not wrong.

She also knows something has to change. What she can't do yet is move on it.

She takes an accurate diagnosis and files it under "I'm just a realist." The label doesn't make the feeling go away. It gives her permission to wait, and calls it responsible instead of scared.

That isn't pessimism.
It's a self-trust problem wearing the costume of caution.

You don't need to think more positively. You need to trust the diagnosis you already made, and let it move you.

Most of the women I work with are waiting to feel ready. One more benchmark. After the next review.I've watched people s...
08/12/2026

Most of the women I work with are waiting to feel ready. One more benchmark. After the next review.

I've watched people spend years this way. The cost never gets counted in weeks.

The obstacle was never information. You already know where you want to go. What you can't explain is why you're not moving.

Underneath that, there's usually a quieter question: who am I to want this?

You don't need clarity about where you're going. You need clarity about what's stopping you.

08/06/2026

Most of my clients arrive knowing exactly where they want to go.

The business they've been sketching for years. The role they've already imagined themselves in. The boundary they've rehearsed in the car. The blend of career and creative work no one gave them permission to want.

What they can't explain is why they're not moving.

So they gather one more benchmark. Take one more course. Wait to feel ready. And readiness, as they quietly suspect, never arrives, because the obstacle was never information. It's a question running underneath, so practiced it feels like a fact: who am I to want this?

That question is where my work lives.

I'm not a coach who helps people fix what's broken. I'm one who helps people move. My clients are not broken; they are stalled, and there is a difference.

Together we build the kind of clarity that actually helps: not clarity about where you're going, you have that. Clarity about what's stopping you. Seen clearly, the fear doesn't vanish. It loses its authority.

The work is gentle, and it is not soft. We work with what's real, in the room, at the moment it matters. What my clients report afterward isn't fireworks, it's quieter and it lasts: grounded, sure of their own judgment, the same person at work and at home.

And I hold no agenda for where you land. Among the outcomes I'm proudest of: a client who chose a new role without giving up the business she's building. A client launching exactly the independent practice she named in our first call. A client making room for both a steady job and the creative career she wouldn't drop. The next best choice is not the prestigious one or the safe one. It's yours.

If this sounds familiar, the first step is smaller than you think. A thirty-minute exploratory call. No pitch, no commitment. Just a place to say out loud what you've been carrying quietly.

The next best choice starts with one conversation. Let's have it.

stephaniedunncoaching.com

Excited to be attending San Francisco Opera’s ‘The Barber of Seville Encounter!’ So much fun in store!
06/18/2026

Excited to be attending San Francisco Opera’s ‘The Barber of Seville Encounter!’
So much fun in store!

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