It all started during the pandemic…
Like almost everyone I knew, I was told to work from home for two weeks in March 2020. Two weeks, of course, turned into more than two years.
At the time, I had been working for a local health plan for eleven years—a job I loved. I spent my days out in the community teaching health and wellness programs for older adults. Almost overnight, that work became off-limits. So I did what I could from home: tackled long-neglected projects, updated files, and even wrote articles about the importance of handwashing.
I was bored to tears within a month.
I begged my manager to let me teach virtual classes. “Please,” I implored. “Everyone else is using Zoom. We’re missing the boat.”
He was sympathetic but firm. The company didn’t believe older adults would log on to listen to wellness presentations—and even if they did, we couldn’t just create programs on the fly. We needed email templates. Registration processes. Vanity URLs.
It took more than six months for my company to launch virtual programs – which were highly successful, by the way. But by then, I couldn’t shake the thought: How much could I accomplish if I didn’t have to wait for permission?
Some people started baking sourdough. I started a company.
In 2021, I formed New Sky Coaching. The name reflected what I had always believed – that every day was a chance for a new start. I had twenty years of experience in corporate wellness, along with certifications in personal training and wellness coaching. I didn’t quit my day job; I simply planned to work with a few clients online in my spare time. Having spent most of my career serving older adults, I focused on wellness coaching, retirement coaching, and fitness training for people in their 50s and beyond.
I built a website. I ran Facebook ads. I reached out to colleagues and former coworkers, who enthusiastically promised referrals.
This was going to be great!
Plot twist – it wasn’t.
I had zero clients.
Life kept moving. I continued working full-time and teaching virtual classes. My company declared that we were working from home forever, so I finally moved my setup from our kitchen table to our spare bedroom. My son started kindergarten. My husband took a new job. I completed a yoga teacher training—not because I wanted to teach yoga, but because I had practiced for years and wanted to deepen my understanding.
Then came the news. My company eliminated my role. After thirteen years, the work I loved was no longer considered valuable—but not to worry, they said. I was being reassigned to an exciting new position! I would sit at my desk at home, in back-to-back meetings, brainstorming ways to convince employers that endless online wellness challenges equaled employee health.
I tried. I really did.
But this was not a job for me.
Ready, set…ready?
My husband encouraged me to revisit my business idea, so I reached out to my contacts again. One day, while having coffee with the director of a senior center, she said, “I don’t know about the coaching—but I’d love it if you taught a yoga class here.”
I was stunned. “Your calendar is packed. You need more classes?”
She shrugged. “There’s always room for more classes.”
I started with one class a week, taught during my lunch hour. One turned into three. Then another senior center called. Then a library. “Can you do personal training?” the original director asked. “And some wellness seminars?”
In 2023, I gave my company two weeks’ notice.
It didn’t take long to realize that while I was coaching—helping people set goals, identify barriers, and track progress—the word itself meant very little to most people. My students didn’t think of it as coaching. They just knew they felt better. They moved better. Their lives improved.
I had tried to escape a corporate mindset, only to recreate it. I was applying a quantitative solution to a deeply qualitative question: How can I feel better?
Time for a change
I no longer felt aligned with my business name. “Coaching” didn’t reflect what I was truly offering. I knew I wanted to keep New Sky, but the rest had to go. “Wellness” was the obvious choice—but I needed to define what that meant to me, and what I wanted to share with my students.
First and foremost, I am a yoga teacher. Even when I’m not teaching yoga specifically, it informs everything I do. Yoga is, at its core, a system of wellness. The word yoga means “union”—the integration of body, breath, and mind. We strengthen the body, balance the breath, and calm the mind so we can live with steadiness, no matter what’s happening around us.
We can be well.
We can breathe, move, and thrive – at any age, starting from wherever you are now.
And so, New Sky Wellness was born—a space where thriving means different things to different people. A place where “holistic” truly means whole: wellness for body, mind, and spirit.
I’m deeply grateful to share my own wellness journey with you. Working with you and helping you find your path to wellness isn’t just my work—it’s my dream job.