The Journey From Dissonance to Orchestration

Our Founder’s career began in an unexpected place: as a women's apparel manufacturer's rep covering a five-state territory across Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa. Managing remote relationships and navigating the challenges of distance taught her early lessons about communication, trust, and the delicate balance required to keep everyone aligned.

When she transitioned into financial services, she brought that relational foundation with her—but quickly discovered how organizational dissonance could undermine even the most capable teams. Working through the transformation from IDS Financial Services to American Express Financial Advisors to Ameriprise Financial, Teri didn't just observe mergers and acquisitions from the sidelines—she lived through them. She witnessed brilliant colleagues struggle not because they lacked talent, but because misaligned systems, competing priorities, and cultural chaos created friction at every turn.

The cost wasn't just inefficiency. Teri watched stress-related illnesses claim colleagues far too young—heart attacks in the office, cancer diagnoses, strokes. In 1995, during a period when the team of two she worked on was doing the work of nine full-time employees (later confirmed by internal audit), she developed three of the four diagnostic symptoms of Lupus. As a single mom, she had to make a choice: conventional medicine or a different path. She chose nutrition, and within six to twelve months, she had healed.

That experience changed everything. It taught her that workplace dissonance isn't just a productivity problem—it's a health crisis. Organizations performing out of sync don't just miss revenue targets; they can break people physically.

But here's what drives her most: She’s seen it her entire life—brilliant people with the intellectual capacity and quiet strength to excel—held back not because they lack merit, but because they don't play political games, don't treat confidence as something to perform rather than something rooted in deep conviction, or don't fit the mold of what leadership is 'supposed' to look like.

Teri spent the first half of her career navigating those systems as a high performer, learning to succeed despite the dissonance. She spent the second half observing them as a consultant across dozens of companies and multiple industries—watching the same patterns play out everywhere she went. But here's the frustration: most consultants are hired to execute a corporate directive, not to challenge the systems creating the problems in the first place. She could diagnose the dissonance, but she was limited in the authority she had to influence lasting change.

In 2020, Teri realized something had to change. By late 2024, she had finally assembled the pieces to do something about it—not by writing another report that sits on a shelf, but by building a framework that works at both the individual and organizational levels simultaneously. 

As Chair of her local Human Rights Commission and through her volunteer and pro bono working alongside Native Americans in Minnesota, helping tribes in Kenya, and assisting an Ethiopian tribe in Minnesota establish fair trade certification while fighting Ethiopian government attempts to erase their culture, she’s learned that thriving eco-systems don't happen by accident. They require intentional design, courageous leadership, and the willingness to challenge the structures that reward performance over substance, politics over merit, and charisma over competence.

For more than 25 years, Teri has dedicated her career to understanding this problem at its root. Now she’s finally in a position to solve it—by helping organizations and leaders shift from dissonance to orchestration.

Think of a world-class orchestra. When every musician plays their part flawlessly but independently—without listening to one another, without a shared tempo, without a conductor ensuring alignment—the result is noise. But when that same ensemble performs in concert, synchronized and responsive, the result is transcendent.

That's what Teri helps organizations and leaders achieve: the shift from dissonance to orchestration. From friction to flow. From surviving to thriving.

Whether she's working with Fortune 500 financial services firms navigating complex transformations, coaching high-potential leaders breaking through to the next level, or guiding executive teams through strategic realignment, her approach integrates what most consultants separate: organizational strategy AND individual performance, business outcomes AND human wellness, systems thinking AND personal growth.

Because she learned the hard way: you can't have one without the other.

Empowering Your Ascent

Through Ascension Avenues, we work with high-potential leaders and executives who have the intellectual capacity and drive to reach the top—but find themselves stuck. Whether you're navigating organizational politics, building executive presence, or struggling with the stress and burnout that come with high-stakes roles, we bring two decades of corporate experience plus specialized training in High Performance Coaching and Integrative Nutrition to help you break through.

Ascension Avenues’ four-tier coaching framework—Accelerate, Elevate, Exemplify, and Orchestrate—meets you where you are and takes you where you want to go.

We also design transformational team retreats in the Catskills, Minnesota, and San Francisco Bay Area that integrate physical, intellectual, and emotional wellness—because sustainable high performance requires all three. Our clients don't just climb the ladder faster; they do it healthier, stronger, diversely, and more aligned with who they truly are.