Hello and welcome!

I’m thrilled you’re here. At Octopus and Stitch Consulting, I help global souls play bigger by stitching the soul and the system back into wholeness. This work is born from a lifetime of cross-cultural experience, DEIB challenges, and international career adventures — both personal and professional.

I’ve always lived “in-between.” My life reveals where belonging breaks down and where we have the opportunity to rebuild something wiser — in business, in systems, and in ourselves.

From Banker to Global Advocate

My career began in California as a banker serving immigrants for a major U.S. bank. I saw first-hand how banking systems would instantly freeze when someone from outside the U.S. appeared — especially after 9/11. Yet every immigrant client was just as valuable as anyone else.

As a highly sensitive empath, I naturally filled the gap between a non-inclusive system and the needs of these clients. I burned out. By the time I left, I managed over $115 million — much of it “organic growth” from Asian families and international businesses.

Growing Up Across Borders

My story begins long before my career. My parents come from a small town in southern South Korea and grew up in deep poverty. My father self-studied to earn a university degree in English and eventually worked on industrial projects in Saudi Arabia. At age two, my mother and I joined him in Riyadh.

We lived in what we called a “villa”: offices and kitchen downstairs, migrant worker housing upstairs. My mother and I were the only women, and I was the only child. For a year, I had no friends. Until other Korean families arrived, I became the entertainer for our community. Singing became my first form of play — and my first way of connecting across differences.

A Global Citizen

I am a global citizen. You can’t define me by passport, language, or nationality. I’ve moved homes 32 times by age 40, worked in over 20 countries, and lived as a digital nomad since the 1990s. I don’t identify with the term “Third Culture Kid” — it’s too narrow and white-centered. I prefer transborder, because no border defines the life of a truly global soul.

Burning Out, Twice

After leaving banking, I shifted from serving high-net-worth clients to microfinance for the underserved. I loved traveling, meeting inspiring people, and exploring new cultures — yet I burned out again. Even as an independent consultant claiming “freedom,” I was still filling the gap.

This time, it wasn’t between “immigrant” and “system.” It was an archetypal gap — an energetic imbalance between white and black. Not racial categories, but patterns where the dominant system sees the other as something to fix or save. Without using deeper senses — intuition, somatic awareness, spiritual sight — the imbalance persists. We debate endlessly without real change.

What I Teach

Everything I offer at Octopus and Stitch Consulting is about closing the gap between soul and system. Not by overgiving, but by helping each person, culture, and system return to their rightful place in the whole. This is the work of global souls playing bigger, bringing conscious leadership, cross-cultural insight, and systemic transformation to every space they touch.