Hi, I’m Patti.
I spent more than two decades as a director at several of the largest technology companies in the country. I led teams, oversaw large programs, managed partnerships, and mentored the people around me. When I retired, I thought the hard part was over.
It wasn't.
Navigating Open Water
What I Didn't Expect
When I retired, I did what I was supposed to do. I volunteered. I explored new interests. I finally had control over my own time — something I hadn't had in decades. For a while, that felt like freedom.
Then it felt like drift.
Without work, I lost the structure that had organized my days, the identity that had organized my sense of self, and the purpose that had gotten me out of bed in the morning. I had expected retirement to be simple. What I found was that designing a life from scratch — without a job description, a performance review, or a team depending on you — is one of the more complex things an accomplished person can attempt.
I also found that the resources available to me were almost entirely financial. There was no shortage of advice about how to fund a retirement. There was almost nothing useful about how to live one.
“Who am I now, and what gives my life meaning?”
In my 40s, I took up open water swimming — and eventually pushed myself through ultramarathon swims while raising money for causes I cared about. Open water swimming is disorienting in a way that pool swimming is not. There are no lane lines. The water moves. The conditions change. You can't see the bottom. You navigate by landmarks, by feel, and by the training you've put in.
Retirement is like that.
It is not the end of the race. It is the point where the lane lines disappear. And the people who navigate it well are not the ones who are most relaxed about it — they are the ones who prepared, sought guidance, built a plan, and were willing to adjust when conditions changed.
That parallel is what Spring Tide Coaching is built on. I bring the same approach I learned in the water: structured preparation, honest assessment of conditions, and a bias toward action over waiting.
MY APPROACH
What I Bring to the Work
Spring Tide Coaching draws on more than 20 years of mentoring and coaching in corporate environments and the open water swimming community. It also draws on the frameworks I used to navigate my own transition: structured self-assessment, values-based design, and a design thinking approach that treats retirement not as something that happens to you but as something you build.
I don't have all the answers — and I'm skeptical of anyone who claims to. What I have is a process, a set of tools, and a genuine investment in helping you build something that is actually yours.
I am not a therapist, and this is not therapy. It is structured, practical, one-on-one work oriented toward a concrete outcome: a life you've designed deliberately, built on an honest understanding of who you are.
Core Values
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Honesty in every interaction, including about the limits of what coaching can and cannot do.
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The second half of life does not have to be solemn. Lightness is part of the process.
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Not as a disposition, but as a working assumption: that deliberate effort produces better outcomes than drift.
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This work is meaningful to me. Helping someone find their footing in a genuinely difficult transition is not a small thing.
Ready to Start?
The first step is a conversation. There's no commitment involved — just an opportunity to understand whether the program is the right fit for where you are.