Career Conversations

Michaela Gormley (she/her) is a proud alum of the University of Washington, graduating in 2009 from the Foster School of Business with a degree in Business Administration – Marketing and a minor in Spanish. She recently started a new role in tech sales after 10+ years in marketing. She served as a member of the UWAA GOLD (Graduates of the Last Decade) Council for two years, including one year leading the diversity, equity and inclusion subcommittee.

As a proud member of the UW Alumni community and as a first-generation college student herself, Michaela is passionate about increasing the inclusivity and accessibility of higher education. She is excited to be back for the second round of UWAA Career Conversations and is grateful to be part of a resource that helps others achieve their personal and professional goals.

In her free time, Michaela is an avid fan of Husky Athletics and has been a football season ticket holder since graduation. She loves spending time in the sunshine of Eastern Washington with her family and friends and prides herself on being a cool aunt to all of her nieces and nephews.

Certified executive coach Catherine Bachy (she/her) brings over fifteen years’ experience as an advisor and coach to leaders and teams in both corporate and public sector settings. She has shared her expertise as a leadership coach, strategic facilitator, and instructor as part of POD’s University Consulting Alliance and quarterly courses since 2015.

Catherine is known for her ability to capture and communicate insights and visual metaphors that help her clients find clarity, map their future state, see their work in new ways, and move beyond roadblocks into the territory of solutions and achievements. Catherine is also gifted in creating safe space for important and sometimes difficult conversations to take place. She is skilled at noticing the deeper dynamics of what is going on and enabling others to respond in ways that produce more satisfying results.

Her key clients include leaders who want to help their teams become high-performing while creating a positive work environment, and managing conflict and stress along the way.

Dr. Helen Chung (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology in the School of Psychology, Family, and Community at Seattle Pacific University, where she teaches graduate courses in organizational behavior, diversity, leadership, and values in the workplace. Her research interests include leadership, diversity and inclusion, employee resource groups, subjective time, and the role of narrative in organizations. She is also co-owner and principal of Pathways Coaching and Consulting and works with individuals and teams in the areas of leadership capacity, career transitions, and organizational effectiveness. She has coached numerous leaders in a variety of organizations and industries, including serving as a leadership coach with the Center for Strategic Leadership and Thinking at the University of Washington. Helen’s work as an educator and coach is driven by her passion to build learning organizations and communities where individuals’ gifts and differences are integrated into the broader culture.

Rosemary E. Simmons, Ph.D. (she/her) is a first-generation, Pell recipient college student who had the privilege of being employed as a licensed psychologist in higher education for over 30 years. She specializes in providing mentoring, training and psychotherapy for young adults and early career professionals. She is honored that she was hired as the inaugural counseling center director for UW Bothell. During her tenure at UW Bothell, she worked closely with the students to assist in the development and opening of the Student Diversity Center, Violence Prevention & Advocacy Program, Health and Wellness Resource Center, and United Way Benefits Hub focused on one-stop services for low-income college students. She worked at UW Bothell for more than seven years before transitioning to semi-retirement at the end of 2021. Rosemary is currently a resident of Kitsap County and provides psychotherapy at Front Street Clinic in Silverdale and consultation and training to university staff, faculty and administrators across the country. She spends her time hiking Kitsap and Olympic Peninsulas, kayaking, reading, cooking, baking and laughing with friends and family, a laugh that startles babies. After all, toddlers should not be the only ones who have belly laughs!

Aleenah Ansari (she/her) is equal parts storyteller, creative problem solver, and journalist at heart who’s rooted in the stories of people behind code and user interfaces. In her current role as a writer and video producer for Microsoft Inside Track, she creates blogs and videos about the experts who build, deploy, and manage the tools used by 190,000+ employees at Microsoft. Her stories cover everything from Microsoft’s security training and underwater datacenter to the Yammer community used to support visa-dependent employees. Her writing has also been featured in GLAAD, Kulfi, CNBC, The Seattle Times and more. Outside of her day job, you can find her helping early-in-career professionals and entrepreneurs feel more confident telling stories about their identity and work, hosting webinars on storytelling and personal branding, and planning her next trip to NYC.

Learn more at Aleenah Ansari’s homepage.

Yejin Lee (she/her) is a New York-based Korean-American equity & justice coach and consultant with over 12 years of experience in the NYC nonprofit sector as an organizer, fundraiser, staff advocate, and organizational design aficionado. Her primary mission as a coach is to support the liberation of people of color by guiding them in finding values-driven pathways for their careers and lives, and by building their capacity to strategize around and survive inequitable experiences within institutions. Her secondary mission is to reduce the harm experienced by people of color within institutions, and she does this through her leadership coaching services & organizational consulting practice. Yejin received her BA from Boston College in History, American Studies, and African Diaspora Studies, has been trained by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond in Undoing Racism, and has completed an equity-informed mediation basics training from Resolutions Northwest.

Learn more at Yejin Lee’s homepage.

Elizabeth Atcheson (she/her)  is a Seattle-based career coach who works with adults of all ages who are looking for jobs or changing careers. In addition to individual work with clients, she gives a variety of affordable workshops, including Level Up Your LinkedIn Profile, Combatting Ageism in the Job Market, Propel Your Professional Growth, and her popular monthly workshop, Tools for Transition.

Prior to becoming a career coach, Elizabeth built a 25-year marketing career, first in San Francisco and later in Seattle. She held roles in marketing, marketing communications, marketing strategy, account management, and B2B sales in a variety of for-profit and non-for-profit enterprises.

Elizabeth earned an undergraduate degree in Psychology from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. She has two adult daughters and two baby grandsons on whom she lavishes attention.

Learn more at Blue Bridge Career Coaching.