Today is the beginning of bringing my previous Substacks - The Pocket Dojō and Beyond The Gilded Cage - together. These are exciting times, and this shift represents a natural extension of all that has come before.
From now on, everything will live under one Substack roof: GRACE Works.
This is more than a change of name. It’s about clarity. It’s about focus. And it’s about making it easier for readers like you to get what you came here for.
This is the beginning of this change as everything comes under a single entity and identity.
Why change?
Over the past year, I’ve been writing and publishing in two spaces. Each had its own feel.
The Pocket Dojo was practical. It gave tools, prompts, and habits that could help people work together better.
Beyond The Gilded Cage was for senior women leaders on the cusp of the second half of their careers. It asked questions about work, meaning, and the life we want to lead.
From comments and feedback, both had value, but they overlapped. I often found myself writing pieces and wondering, “Which Substack should this go to?”
So I’ve decided to simplify things and have just one Substack so that it’s clear where readers can find what they are looking for.
Why GRACE Works?
GRACE Works is the core of my work. I took inspiration from Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks, the home of groundbreaking animated movies and TV shows.
Just as DreamWorks became more than a film studio, a seal of creative integrity and transformative storytelling, GRACEWorks aims to become a philosophy-driven leadership movement, a movement for leaders reclaiming their centre.
In 2021, Intuition gifted me the GRACE Framework, much like a songwriter channels music and lyrics into a song.
At the time, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it when it emerged, but today, it has evolved into one of the primary frameworks1 I now use with leaders in consulting, tech, and beyond.
GRACE stands for:
Grounding – staying steady under pressure through our thoughts and our body.
Resolve – acting with courage and clarity and in alignment with our values.
Acceptance – working with reality, not against it.
Create – bringing genuinely new ideas and solutions to life.
Embody – living life through our own daily practice to cultivate our version of grace.
These are not abstract ideas. They are practical skills. Grace isn’t a behaviour we manufacture in the moment, but emerges as a natural consequence of the choices, discipline, and awareness we cultivate over time.
It’s what allows us to keep our edge without burning out and helps us stay human in places that can often feel harsh.
By bringing everything under GRACE Works, I can share ideas, tools, and stories in one clear line. No more dividing the practical from the reflective. No more splitting what belongs together.
What this means for you
You don’t need to do anything. If you’re reading this, you’re already part of the new space.
What will change is the feel:
One stream of writing. No more wondering which Substack holds what.
A clearer voice. Every post will connect back to the GRACE Framework and cultivating grace in some way. Sometimes through tools. Sometimes through stories. Sometimes through questions.
Deeper threads. Over time, you’ll see how the pieces link. A reflection may relate to a specific microskill. A skill may be tied to a story.
All of this comes together to form a potential path for you to feel more in control of your energy, boundaries, and decisions throughout your day.
Think of it like this: before, you had two rooms. Now, there is one larger room, with space for both practice and reflection.
I hope that the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts. After all, few would argue that cultivating more grace is something that the world needs more of.
The bigger picture
Why does any of this matter?
Well, because the world we work in is not getting easier. In many sectors, the pace seems faster than ever, the stakes feel constant, and the pressure is higher and wearing.
Many of us respond by pushing harder. By doing more. By holding ourselves to impossible standards.
That can work for a while. But it comes at a cost. The signs of strain show up: physical, mental and emotional exhaustion, doubt, short temper, loss of focus, to name but a few common symptoms.
GRACE Works is about meeting that pressure differently. The practice and philosophy of Aikido and the lens of interpersonal neurobiology help inform this in ways that no business school I’ve taught at or know teaches.
It’s not about lowering standards. It’s by finding steadiness, courage, acceptance, creativity, and embodiment in how we work and live.
Experience suggests that there is a better way. To that end, GRACEWorks aims to be:
A global movement equipping leaders to lead from the inside out, where grace becomes leadership in action (i.e. the practices of leadership are adaptive, relational and contextual2).
A leadership movement for those who are done with performance culture and power games, who sense there’s more to leadership than control, KPIs, and resilience hacks.
A community that believes that GRACE, as described here, is the next frontier in leadership practice, not as a nice-to-have, but as a strategic necessity in navigating increasing complexity and uncertainty that can be trained.
At its heart is the GRACE Framework®, a five-element practice that equips leaders with the inner capacity to meet external complexity and navigate uncertainty by staying rooted, resolute, accepting, creative, and embodied.
What I mean by GRACE
Grace3 can be understood as:
The felt experience of coherence, when your actions, presence, and values consistently align
The impact of composure under pressure; others experience calm, respect, or clarity in your presence, and it is contagious
The soft power of earned trust; not because you demand it, but because you consistently model balance, composure and integrity to others
A state of psychological spaciousness, where you're less reactive, more intentional about the choices you make, and more open to others’ humanity
From the perspective of GRACEWorks, it’s not something granted by a divine force4 but is cultivated through deliberate practice and becomes visible in how you navigate tension, power, and uncertainty.
Grace is a lag factor that emerges over time as a by-product of sustained practice, integration, and development. It is earned through practice, refined through friction, and revealed in hindsight, in how individuals and teams navigated moments of complexity, failure, or growth.
It's not immediately controllable, but it becomes visible as a consequence of inner shifts made by individuals.
What you can expect
In the months ahead, here’s what you’ll see in GRACE Works:
Regular articles. Clear pieces of work that speak to the real demands of work and life.
Practical tools. Exercises, habits, and prompts you can try on for size to see what works for you.
Stories. From my work, from others, and sometimes from my own life.
Experiments. I will share things I am testing myself with. I firmly believe it’s important to ‘walk your talk’ to be able to offer meaningful signposts and ideas for others to explore. Some work, some don’t, but all provide learning opportunities.
Everything will come with one aim: to help you keep your clarity and energy and find your way of cultivating grace in the workplace, even when things are increasingly challenging.
A personal note
This change is also about integrity.
For me, GRACE is not just a framework. It is how I attempt to live and work. I’m a work in progress and a messy human being, much like everyone else.
For me, my Aikido practice is my practical way of cultivating grace. I’m 7 years into my practice and continue to develop and grow as I learn, practice, fail and learn over and over again. It’s a process I’ve come to love and a philosophy that informs my transformational coaching work with individuals and teams.
Bringing my writing together under this name feels like coming home. It means I am not dividing my attention. It means I can serve you better.
I also want to take a moment to thank you. Many of you have been reading since the early days when I first pushed ‘send’ with much trepidation.
Your feedback, questions, conversations and reflections have helped shape this work.
My hope is that GRACEWorks will be even more useful for you.
So, this is the start of a new chapter. A simpler one. A clearer one.
From here on, the path runs through GRACE.
I hope you’ll keep walking it with me.
Integrating the GRACE Framework, Aikido, and the Leadership Circle Profile (LCP) creates a model of conscious leadership that is deeply embodied, relational, and developmentally attuned. When we layer in Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB), we add the missing link that explains why and how this integration works at the level of the brain, body, and relationships.
GRACE and Grace will be used interchangeably throughout the content of this Substack and mean the same things as outlined in this post.
From the outset, it is worth clarifying that my definition of grace has a cross-cultural fit and is not related to religion or connected with politics in any way, shape or form. This work is deliberately secular in its focus and language.
Wonderful!
It’s been a long time gestating… well done for birthing this 🙏✨