Fractional COO

Advisor and Strategist

Helping you move from a state of unease about your next big business or career move to clarity about your goals, a clear strategy to achieve them, systems to enable and measure progress and tactics to ensure meaningful connections, sustainable high performance and thriving both in and out of the office.

One the outside everything looks great, but on the inside it’s a different story…

You’ve worked relentlessly to achieve your current level of success, and to many, your life seems enviable. People frequently remind you how incredible your accomplishments are, and mention how fortunate you must feel. And while you truly are grateful, and your achievements are remarkable, there’s still something missing—it just doesn’t feel the way you expected.

As an expatriate, you can’t seem to regain that excitement and curiosity of working overseas - and as a result everything feels like an uphill struggle.

As an executive, you feel that you’re constantly striving, but not making progress in your career - and your motivation is heading for burnout.

As an entrepreneur, you’re juggling your company, family, friends, health and social life and feel like you’re failing at all of them at least some of the time.

As a high IQ / neurodivergent individual you can’t shake the sense of not meeting your potential - and it’s gnawing away at your confidence.

Despite your professional wins, accessing the deep sense of fulfillment and joy that should accompany them feels elusive. You've tried to cultivate confidence and contentment but it often feels out of reach, leaving you feeling anxious, disconnected, and questioning why the success you’ve earned doesn’t bring the meaning and joy you crave.

You are not alone, and help is one click away.

Welcome! I’m Hanna Steplewska, an experienced company President, COO, Board Member and Certified Coach.

I specialize in advising high performing individuals - expatriates, executives, entrepreneurs and exceptional (high IQ / 2e) individuals - from a state of unease in their business or career into a mindset and day to day experience of high performance, meaning, connection and results.

Success and reaching goals doesn’t have to come via burnout, dissatisfaction and loneliness.

The sense that something is missing, or that you’re somehow not able to break through habits that aren’t serving you, or that the overwhelm is paralyzing and unrelenting - or all of these at once - is a lot to carry. The pace of work with its constant distractions and urgency, remote work and global teams, divisive rhetoric and difficult interpersonal interactions in the office and at home add to the burden. More so if they are also in a language and culture that’s foreign to you. And all too often, you are so deep in the weeds that even thinking about the bigger picture is difficult.

I help individuals like you pull back their focus, regain perspective, and create healthier ways to tackle everything from task overwhelm to clarifying 10- 3- and 1 year business goals, dealing with cultural differences, untangling team power dynamics and having difficult conversations in the Boardroom and at the kitchen table. In doing so I enable you to once again find flow, create engagement and meaning in your life and yes, tap into joy on demand, so that high performance becomes sustainable.

I am deeply committed to helping you create and achieve your vision for your personal and professional life. Together we will explore what you want and find your natural and most powerful way of achieving it. Along the way you will receive the evidence-based, neuroscience-backed tools, techniques, tactics and strategies best suited to your specific goals and needs, so that you are well resourced throughout and beyond our work together.

Testimonials

  • "I was looking for a way to improve my balance and focus. I always found the way Hanna steered the conversation to be valuable and considered. Restructuring my day has allowed me to deliver as well as fire fight. I now feel calm and in control. Working with Hanna I feel happy, relaxed, clearer in my head. Little exercises can have a big effect. The greatest outcome has been the management of my relationship with my business partner. It has allowed me to relax outside of work."

    Ben Scott-Robinson, Founder & CEO

  • “I was successfully exiting one business and starting a new position in a corporate environment. So much change in so little time was a lot to take in and I needed to recalibrate who I was all over again. After a session I always have direction and clarity. I feel calm and focused and know what I need to do next, which is very comforting. Letting some walls down has allowed me to see my life and my decisions with significantly more clarity and increased my peace of mind.”

    Danielle Leighton, Founder & CEO

  • "Struggling and stuckness felt lonely and frustrating. I’ve got no shortage of ideas but I can go in circles starting new projects and abandoning others when they get complicated. Hanna was able to help me see my delay tactics, the ways I question and distract myself. She showed me how to orient myself to a vision of my future self that makes me want to sing and dance. I’ve got a deadline for my book proposal that is real and about to be met. And a plan to finish my book by June, which I hadn’t thought possible until Hanna questioned my doubts."

    Sue Jaye Johnson, Writer, TEDx Speaker

  • "After working with Hanna I feel empowered, supported, more resilient. Despite difficult life events and now, an uncertain global future, I'm generally able to keep myself centered through practices I learned. I now have a wider range of tools, including specific journaling prompts and meditations, that work for me."

    Rod, Publishing Consultant

  • "I was feeling overwhelmed with being crazy busy and dealing with impostor syndrome. Hanna’s advice is based on science, logic and reason not just fluffy mumbo jumbo. Hanna’s stress managing tools are simple and easy to implement but very effective and portable. I can prevent the feeling of being overwhelmed getting out of control like it used to. I feel empowered. I have gained back my confidence and belief in myself."

    Catherine Pratt, COO

  • "Working with Hanna has expanded my thinking and approach to problem solving. Hanna provided a great new perspective and expanded my approach to the problem I faced as well as specific industry advice. The result is measurable - I was successful in making the first, important, step towards my career goal, where before I had been stuck."

    Nicole Brown, Director Business Development

  • "I appreciated how skillfully Hanna presents and facilitates, as well as the demonstrated depth of content knowledge. The workshop was well-designed, well-delivered, and engaging. Hanna has a rare mastery of process and presence."

    Karen, Executive Coach

  • "Learning new, more efficient ways to bring the presence practice into my everyday life. Hanna made it easier and if it's easier, I will do it more consistently. This benefits me and everyone I come in contact with. I'm so grateful."

    Lori, Founder & CEO

  • “I feel more relaxed and can enjoy time away from work, knowing that I can be more focused at work. I now have some tools to turn to that can keep me on track. I feel grateful to have worked with Hanna.”

    Maria

  • Expatriates

    Living and working in a culture other than your own brings unique challenges and opportunities. From dealing with immigration and move logistics to finding a social circle and navigating office hierarchies, everything is different. The excitement of the move wears off and the day-to-day challenges start to grind you down. Sometimes you need a little help to find or regain your footing, and having a Coach with expat experience on 4 continents and work and travel experience in over 50 countries makes all the difference, making work, home and everything in-between more manageable.

  • Executives

    Managing up and down, dealing with corporate policies, executing decisions at scale, balancing remote work, business travel and teams across multiple time zones, a culture of urgency, inadequate systems, poor planning and scarce resources is a recipe for overwhelm and burnout. Yet for many of us corporate work is our best option. Having a Coach with firsthand experience of working in private and publicly traded corporations across 4 continents ensures you can always have an deep conversation about what's possible and what's needed and have the confidence in your next steps.

  • Entrepreneurs

    Balancing the needs of investors, employees and customers while driving product-market fit, ensuring adequate funding, building company culture, tactically outpacing competitors while building and executing long term strategy and bringing in revenue is an enormous amount of work. It’s easy to be so consumed by it that everything else in life suffers. Having a Coach who has first-hand experience of building multiple companies from the ground up gives you an edge both in building your business and balancing the rest of life.

  • High IQ / 2e

    High IQ and neurodivergent individuals think differently from the majority of the population. Masking and “running in 2nd gear” to fit in is exhausting and isolating, leaving you craving for safe spaces where you can be fully yourself and share your knowledge and unique way to seeing the world. Having a Coach who is also high IQ and neurodivergent allows you to drop the mask, relax and run in 5th gear while working through the challenges and harnessing the superpowers that come with your unique brain structure and chemistry.

“A Coach is to a Therapist as a Personal Trainer is to a Physician. The Therapist and the Physician get you from ill to well. Coaches and Trainers get you from well to very high performance.”
— MARTHA BECK

Here’s how we can work together:

STEP 1: Let’s connect on a Coaching Consultation call to discuss your needs and expectations, my coaching practice and the services I provide, and together we'll determine if we're a good client - coach fit.

STEP 2: Reaffirm your successes and strengths. Devise strategies to address your challenges. Clarify where you are at right now and why. Determine what feels like freedom for your path forward.

STEP 3: Build and practice the skills, strategies and tactics that enable meaningful connection, flow, and joy on demand, while working towards your goals and building the life you truly want.