I’ve Sat at Many Tables. Here’s What I’ve Learned About Who Actually Belongs There.
Lessons on leadership, belonging, and the value of lived experience in executive coaching and strategic consulting.
In the the first article in this series, I talked about the difference between a coach, a consultant, and a trusted advisor, and how to know what kind of support you actually need.
What I have learned over the course of my career is that perspective matters just as much as expertise. The way we lead, coach, consult, and advise others is shaped by the rooms we have navigated, the people we have served, and the experiences that have refined our judgment over time.
This piece is different.
Because before you decide who to bring in, it is worth understanding what kind of perspective you are bringing into the room.
The tables that shaped my perspective
And where that perspective comes from.
Over the course of my career, I have sat at a lot of different tables.
The account team table at a Minneapolis ad agency in my twenties. The only Black person in the room. Managing multimillion-dollar client relationships. Translating culture for people who had not yet learned how to see it for themselves.
The leadership table at a global manufacturing company. Serving as Chief Marketing Officer across five product divisions. Navigating international markets. Leading in spaces that did not always know what to do with a marketing voice at that level.
The nonprofit CEO table at The BrandLab. An organization I loved long before I led it. A season that asked more of me than any role before it. And gave just as much back.
The board table. Advisory boards. Executive boards. Community boards. Rooms where the pace is slower, the horizon is longer, and the decisions shape what outlasts you.
The stage, which is its own kind of table. U.S. Bank. Allianz Life. Deluxe. The Minnesota Timberwolves. TeamWomen. MCAD. Each one a different room. The same core question underneath it all: What do I have to offer here, and am I willing to say it outloud?
And now, the table I built myself.
Legacy Rising.
The place where coaching, consulting, storytelling, and leadership all live in the same space. The place where I no longer have to decide which parts of me are welcome.
I have learned something at every table. But a few truths have stayed consistent.
Leadership, belonging, and the difference between being invited and truly included
This was one of the earliest lessons. And one of the most important.
You can be invited into a room and still not belong there. You can have a seat and still not have influence. You can be present and still not be fully seen.
Being welcome means the door opened. Belonging means the room was built with you in mind, or has done the work to expand to hold you fully.
Those are not the same experience.
For a long time, I navigated rooms where I was welcomed but not fully held. Over the years, learned how to move in those spaces. I built relationships. I delivered results. And eventually, I recognized something deeper.
The energy it takes to constantly navigate a room is energy you cannot fully invest in the work you came to do.
Belonging changes that. You do not have to earn it. You recognize it. And once you do, your standard shifts.
Belonging is not something a room gives you when you perform well enough. It is something you feel when the room was built with you in mind, or when it has done the honest work of expanding to hold you. If you have never felt it, you will recognize it immediately when you do.
For many women leaders, especially those who have spent years adapting to rooms that were never designed with them in mind, belonging can feel complicated. We become experts at navigating. At translating. At proving. But leadership becomes more sustainable when we stop asking, “How do I fit here?” and begin asking, “What am I uniquely positioned to build?
What building Legacy Rising taught me about leadership and
alignment
I had been invited into many rooms. None of them prepared me for what it would feel like to build my own.
Legacy Rising is not just a business. It is alignment.
The strategist. The coach. The storyteller. The leader. The woman behind all of it. Not in pieces. Not in parts. Fully.
That decision changed everything. Not because building your own table is easy. It is not. But because it is clear. You decide what belongs. You decide who you are building for. You stop trying to fit into spaces that ask you to become someone else. And you start creating spaces where others do not have to shrink to stay.
When you build your own table, you get to decide who belongs there. Not in an exclusionary way. In the most generative possible way: you get to build for the people you are most equipped to serve, and you get to stop trying to fit into rooms that were built for someone else’s vision of what leadership looks like.
The hardest rooms still gave me something
Not every table was a good fit.
Over time some stretched me. Some sharpened me. And some asked me to become smaller than I
was.
I want to be honest about that.
There were rooms where my voice was dismissed before it was heard. Rooms where excellence was expected but not always recognized. Rooms that required a version of me that felt incomplete.
Still, those experiences cost something. And they also clarified something.
They taught me the difference between growth and misalignment. Between challenge and diminishment. Between access and alignment.
The hardest rooms did not define me. But they refined me. They made it clear what I would carry forward. And what I would leave behind.
The rooms that were hardest to survive became the clearest teachers. Not because suffering is instructive on its own, but because pressure reveals what you are actually made of and what you are actually unwilling to trade. That knowledge is worth something that easier rooms cannot give you.
Who actually belongs at the table
After twenty years of rooms, here is what I know.
The table belongs to the person who has something real to contribute. Not the loudest voice. Not the most familiar background. Not the one who looks like what the room has always been.
The one who has done the work. Who has developed her perspective. Who is willing to say what needs to be said, even when the room has not yet caught up.
The table belongs to the person who holds the door open. Who understands that her presence creates possibility for someone else.
In the end, it belongs to the woman who knows when to leave. Who can tell the difference between a room that is stretching her and one that is asking her to disappear.
Leaving is not failure. It is discernment.
Why lived experience matters in strategic consulting
This is where this connects back to the first article.
Because when you bring in a consultant, you are not just bringing in a skillset. The strongest strategic consultants bring more than technical expertise. They bring leadership experience across industries, an ability to recognize patterns quickly, and the judgment to help organizations navigate complexity with clarity.
You are bringing in someone who has sat in rooms where the stakes were real and the decisions mattered.
The value is not just what they build. It is what they see. How quickly they can get to what matters. What they know to prioritize. What they are willing to say that others might not.
In the end, that perspective only comes from having sat at many tables.
I have sat at many tables. And what I know, after all of them, is this: the most powerful thing any leader can do is stop waiting to be invited and start building rooms where the people she cares about most can finally feel what it is to belong.
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What comes next in this series
In the final article in this series, I will bring this down to the practical level. What strategic marketing consulting actually looks like. What to expect. What to ask. And how to know if the partnership is working.
If you are navigating growth, stepping into new rooms, or deciding what kind of support will actually move your organization forward, this is the work we do inside Legacy Rising. Through strategic consulting grounded in real experience, we help leaders and organizations move from complexity to clarity with greater confidence and intention.
Clarity that turns into action. Partnership that meets you where you are and helps you move forward with purpose.
You can learn more about Legacy Rising’s consulting work at legacyrising.com, or simply start with a conversation. No pressure. Just a place to get clear on what’s next.