Emory NeuroscienceDuke MBADropboxInstacartCNN160-person global org$40M budgetTwo acquisitions3,000-person eventsEmory NeuroscienceDuke MBADropboxInstacartCNN160-person global org$40M budgetTwo acquisitions3,000-person events
The founder
Hi, I'm Joyce.
Neuroscientist by training. Operator by trade. Founder by choice.
I'm a founder, operator, and speaker who has spent the past 14 years at the intersection of neuroscience, organizational design, people strategy, and human performance. My life and career have been shaped by one question: what makes humans, human?
After a traumatic brain injury at 18, I spent years discovering, designing, and rebuilding my own mindset, habits, and behaviors. It left me with a perspective almost no one else brings: how the mind actually works, how we're wired, and how to rebuild both on purpose.
I went on to apply those principles to teams and organizations.
Led a 160-person global organization at a public technology company through hypergrowth, two acquisitions, and successive reorganizations
Built the operational backbone spanning finance, people, recruiting, L&D, legal, and procurement
Stood up the people analytics function that sharpened hiring decisions and exposed the bottlenecks slowing the business down
Produced and moderated events for audiences of up to 3,000, convening people to trade ideas and build community
B.S. Neuroscience & Behavioral Biology, Emory University · MBA, Duke Fuqua School of Business · Ex-Dropbox, Instacart, CNN
Build high-performing teams and cultures where human potential drives success.
Why this work
The path was never linear.
And that turned out to be the point.
I've given up lifelong dreams. I've watched identities I spent decades building come apart in the snap of a finger. Each time, I had to decide whether to wait for the old version of myself to come back, or build a new one deliberately.
I chose to build. And in the rebuilding I found meaning, purpose, and impact, along with the mindset, behaviors, and habits that hold them up.
Now I'm sharing them, so other leaders and teams can build their own edge. Organizations are built, shaped, and reshaped. They adapt. Because real leaders build other leaders.
The Human Edge isn't born. It's built.
The path
1Emory · Neuroscience
2Instacart
3Dropbox · Design Ops
4CNN
5Duke · MBA
The invitation
Build your company the way it deserves.
For executives and growing organizations at the moments when leadership, structure, and culture all need to evolve together.
What sets the best leaders apartwas never the tools.
Great leadership is built from your thinking, your judgment, and your experience. Not the data. Not the automation. Not anyone else's playbook.
It comes from your individual way of leading. Your edge. And that's built.
Where the edge comes from
Not issued. Assembled, from what only you have.
The science
We treat leadership the way science treats any skill worth mastering.
Created. Built. Practiced.
Judgement, adaptability, and resilience behave like every other trainable capability. They're created deliberately, built through structured practice, and reinforced until they hold under pressure.
The methods come from neuroscience, behavioural science, and organizational design. The frameworks are the ones I've used to build teams and run operations at scale. This isn't coaching, and it isn't a personality test. It's a build.
Not sure yet? Send a note and we'll work out whether it's the right fit.
Before we begin
Who this is, and isn't, for.
Not a fit
Want a surface-level personal brand exercise
Looking for a plug-and-play leadership model
Want culture work without changing how you manage
Expect organizational problems solved through coaching alone
Unwilling to make hard calls on roles, structure, or behavior
A fit
Stepping into greater scope, visibility, or complexity
Need to influence beyond your formal authority
Want to lead with more consistency and less performing
Navigating a reorganization, transition, or growth phase
Want practical tools, not generic leadership advice
Willing to examine both your behavior and the system around you
Questions
Frequently asked.
How is the Sprint different from coaching or a course?
It isn't advice or curriculum. It's a build. You leave with a permanent artifact, your Edge Blueprint, not a folder of notes you never open again.
What makes this different from other leadership work?
It's grounded in neuroscience and performance science: real methods and frameworks, not personality quizzes or vibes. And it's built around you rather than a template you're asked to adopt.
What will I get that I can't get from your free content?
The free content is the what. The Sprint is the how, applied to you, one to one, until it is actually built and yours.
How do I know it's right for me?
If you have the results and want the meaning, the language, and the system underneath them, it's right. Send a note and we'll figure it out honestly.
How much time does it take?
Sixty minutes a week for six weeks, plus whatever depth you choose to go between sessions. The work between is yours.
4–6 weeks · Series A–B · Diagnose, architect, install, activate
The math
Skip the $300K hire.Get the work done before the job req opens.
No search. No ramp. A fraction of the cost.
A full-time executive
$300K+ salary, plus equity, benefits, and overhead
A three to six month search
Months of ramp before any real impact
A permanent line on the payroll, even if the stage changes
The Intensive
The infrastructure built in four to six weeks
No search, no ramp, no equity
Fixed scope and a fixed timeline
Systems your team owns after I step out
Sound familiar?
What worked at 20 peoplewon't necessarily work at 80.
Growth creates complexity before most companies are ready for it.
Decisions still route through the founders.
Roles start overlapping.
Hiring becomes reactive.
New people take too long to ramp.
Managers operate differently.
Processes and tools accumulate without anyone designing how they should work together.
None of those problems necessarily require a larger People team. They require organizational architecture.
How it works
Diagnose. Architect. Install. Activate.
Over 4–6 weeks, I diagnose, design, and install the core organizational infrastructure your company needs to scale, without adding unnecessary bureaucracy or immediately hiring another full-time executive.
01
Diagnose
Leadership interviews and an audit of how the company actually runs today. We find where growth is already creating friction, and what will break next.
02
Architect
Design the roles, accountability, decision rights, and operating rhythms your next stage requires.
03
Install
Build the handful of systems that matter now, not an entire HR department. Hiring, onboarding, management, and operating cadence, prioritized for your stage.
04
Activate
Align the leadership team on how the new system works, hand over ownership, and leave you with a 90-day plan. Then I step out.
Every engagement is scoped to your company's stage, size, and complexity. There are different levels of engagement, and we'll find the right one together.
01 · Talk
Book a call
A 15-minute conversation about where your company is and where it's headed. Grab a time →
→
02 · Scope
Get your proposal
You receive a detailed overview with the scope, timeline, and engagement level that fits.
→
03 · Begin
We start the work
We kick off on your timeline. Impact from week one, with no search and no ramp.
If I'm not the right person for it, I'll tell you, and point you toward who is.
Where to next
Build now, beforecomplexity builds for you.
The best time to design organizational infrastructure isn't after growth starts breaking things. It's just before.
This is a community of founders, executives, and senior operators who want something different. We want the real thing. We want the human side of leadership.
We're building the community that has each other's backs. The ones who tell you the truth, instead of what everyone else tells you. The ones you want through the highs and the lows, through thick and thin. Because whether you're a founder, a leader, or a senior operator, the support system is what makes or breaks the experience.
This is where you're encouraged to think bigger and dream bigger. Until your ambitions become reality.
It's who you do the journey with, that matters most.
What's inside
Four ways the room works for you.
01
Community
The peers who get it, across cities and time zones. In the room, not on a feed.
02
Rooms
Dinners, salons, and roundtables that travel, plus online sessions. No panels, no performance.
03
Labs
Prototype the future of work together, in hands-on working sessions.
Membership is by application. Most members expense it through their L&D or professional-development budget.
Apply
Join the crew.
Join the founding cohort, and help shape what it becomes.
For organizations & institutions
Partner with the room.
The Collective works with organizations who take human capability seriously, and treat it as something you build, not something you hire for. Three ways in, depending on what you're after.
01
Bring it in-house
Seats for a cohort of your leaders, inside the same room as founders and operators from outside your walls. Most companies fund it through L&D.
02
Sponsor a room
Underwrite the dinners, salons, and roundtables. Your name in front of senior operators who are hard to reach any other way. Aligned brands only, no logos on lanyards.
03
Founding partnership
Build it with me. For enterprises and institutions who want to shape how the Collective grows, from the Labs agenda to the cities it lands in next.
From relearning how to think,to building what companies run on.
At 18
The rebuild
A traumatic brain injury took the identity I'd spent my whole life building. Relearning how to think became the origin of everything I do now.
→
In tech
The operator
I rebuilt in Silicon Valley: leading a 160-person global org through two acquisitions, and building the people systems fast-growing companies depend on.
→
On my own
The founder
Now I build companies from zero to one, and the human systems inside them, from scratch.
An international presence, too: born in the US, raised across Seoul and Tokyo, and schooled internationally. Neuroscience at Emory, an MBA at Duke, and now building in New York.
Why people book me
A perspective only a handful of people can offer.
Rebuilding a life, an identity, and a career after a brain injury. It taught me how the mind actually works.
How we think, behave, connect, and decide, from the inside out.
I've spent the years since applying that inside organizations: to build teams, shape culture, and design the practices that make companies work.
Beyond the keynotes, I also speak to
Women building careers in techThe woman-founder pathFinding what you're meant to doLeading through changeHow the mind makes decisions
The talks
One signature talk. Four more ways in.
Each one turns a human quality into something you can actually build.
The signature talkKeynote / workshop 30–60 min
What’s Your Pearl?
The human layer of organizations: what competitors can’t copy and money can’t buy.
Part neuroscience. Part business. Part hard-won experience. Every company is starting to look and sound the same. This talk is about getting the difference back, in your people, your teams, and your company.
How humans are actually wired, and how to apply it to your team and organization
Why the differences got flattened out, and why that is now the biggest risk to your edge
Turn your people’s lived experience, thinking, and expertise into your most valuable asset
Why the trade-offs are false ones: people and numbers, efficiency and creativity
SignatureOrganizational CultureFuture of Work
01Keynote 30–60 min
The Human Side of Business
Soft skills, hard results.
How human qualities convert directly into revenue, retention, and results
What those qualities actually are, and why they matter more now than ever
Frameworks to build them as trainable capabilities, not fixed personality traits
LeadershipFuture of Work
02Keynote / workshop 45–60 min
The Last Advantage
The human layer AI can't replace.
Build a leadership operating system, unique to how you actually think and work
Scale the human layer from slogans on the wall into operating infrastructure
A framework to build it in as a foundation, instead of bolting it on after a reorg
Organizational CultureFuture of Work
03Keynote 30–60 min
Rewired
What a brain injury at 18 taught me about what actually matters.
An unsentimental account of what recovery actually took
Why the unconventional path, the detours and pivots, becomes the advantage
A lens to audit whether you're building your life on purpose, or by default
Purpose & MeaningPersonal Growth
04Keynote 30–60 min
Building a Culture of Resilience
The science of building back after setbacks.
What neuroscience and organization design agree on about rebuilding capability
The same mechanism at two scales: a person, and a team through a reorg
Resilience as an engineered capability, not a trait you either have or don't
