Where this work began
I spent years building a life that made sense on paper. From the outside, things looked like they were going well. From the inside, I was performing a version of myself I was beginning to outgrow.
My training in science and business taught me to trust logic, data, and measurable outcomes. That way of thinking is useful, and I still draw on it. It is also incomplete. The harder-to-name questions about meaning, energy, and fit do not respond well to spreadsheets. Those questions tend to come up when life begins to shift.
Living and working across multiple countries taught me uncertainty before I had words for it. New cultures, new languages, new expectations. I learned early that steadiness does not come from knowing what comes next. It comes from learning how to stay yourself when you do not.
Eventually, burnout and the growing sense that something no longer fit made it harder to keep going in the same way. I had to look more honestly at what success meant to me. Not the version that sounded right, but the one that actually felt true.
Cancer also became part of this story. It deepened my relationship with uncertainty, control, energy, and what it means to stay connected to yourself when life asks you to change. It also made me less patient with shallow answers, including my own. I share more about that experience here.
Today, I work with thoughtful people and the teams they are part of, often during their own seasons of questioning. Capable people carrying uncertainty, responsibility, change, or the quiet sense that something no longer fits. We create space to think clearly, make grounded decisions, and move forward in a way that reflects who they are now, not who they used to be.
What runs through my work
I’ve long been interested in what shapes people from the inside, especially when life gets more demanding. I think a lot about what happens when pressure builds, roles shift, or the old way of doing things stops working.
Those moments often bring up deeper questions about how we are living, what matters now, and what is no longer sustainable. They also bring us closer to the stories we have been shaped by, the ones we carry consciously and unconsciously into how we work, relate, and make sense of change.
My experience with yoga, mindfulness, living across cultures, and moving through my own years of uncertainty has taught me that simple, everyday practices can have a real effect on how people think, respond, and carry what life is asking of them.
Leadership, as I see it, is less about role or title and more about how you behave when things get demanding. You see it in how someone makes decisions, treats others, and carries themselves when the path isn’t clear.
What I bring to this work
My work combines self-awareness practices with practical tools from coaching, leadership development, behavior change, and process improvement.
My perspective comes from the roles I’ve lived: mother, immigrant, scientist, corporate leader, project manager, yoga teacher, facilitator, and coach. It also comes from burnout, cancer, reinvention, and the quieter turning points that changed how I understand uncertainty, energy, and strength.
Most of what passes for growth is just better performance. Real growth is quieter, harder, and more honest. It tends to look like learning to stay with what is actually true long enough to do something useful with it.
I work as a thinking partner. I help people see the patterns shaping their decisions and find a way of leading themselves through change that lasts. The point is to stay yourself while you get better at responding to life and work, with clearer judgment and a pace you can sustain.
More About Kati
I am an ICF Professional Certified Coach, an IFO certified forum-style facilitator, and an Energy Leadership® Index Master Practitioner and a Certified Cancer Journey Coach. My background also includes an MBA, an MSc, Six Sigma Black Belt training, and earlier work in science, corporate leadership, project management, wellness, and facilitation.
My training helps me hold a clear process, while my lived experience helps me understand that real change rarely happens in a straight line. Outside of work, I am usually doing yoga, traveling, playing the piano, reading, or being with my family.
Why Happy Cinnamon?
Happy Cinnamon is not a brand name I picked from a generator. I named the business when happiness was something I was chasing. The name has had to grow with me.
Happiness is not fixed.
What felt meaningful in one season may not fit in the next. Transitions surface a quieter question: what does fulfillment even mean now? Usually nothing is wrong. What you value, where your energy goes, and what you can carry are all changing.
Cinnamon holds complexity.
Warmth and challenge. Confidence and doubt. Steadiness and strain. Real life is rarely one thing.
Happy Cinnamon reflects what I have come to understand: that meaning is built from the inside. Some of that thinking keeps finding its way into Margin Notes by Kati, when a page like this can't hold all of it.
“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
— Mary Oliver
Start with fit
Coaching begins with trust, fit, and a conversation that feels useful.