You might find this hard to believe but...

Self-Awareness might be the most effective form of leadership training

I show audiences how to write their own story, keep their best people, and create spaces where everyone feels like they belong.

Tell me if this sounds familiar

You've built a life and career on being the one people can count on.You show up. You deliver. You carry the weight when things fall apart.Because if YOU don't, WHO will?And then one day, it hits you: you've become an extra in your own story.How did you get here, and how can you make a change?

Here's the thing we rarely even think about...

You probably didn't choose these patterns.
Most likely, you inherited them.
From your family, your friends, your education, your job, or somewhere else.

And until you can see the narratives running the show, you'll continue being in the passenger seat of your own life. I know this from experience

I'm Erica C. Chen

...and I'm on a mission to make sure no one ever has to feel alone.

I have seen firsthand how outdated systems quietly exhaust high performers, especially parents and caregivers, while rewarding the appearance of having it all together. I saw it in others, and I saw it in myself.Before my pivot into professional speaker, I spent over a decade managing large-scale communities and leading teams in high-growth environments.Today, I show leaders how to deepen their self-awareness and use it to build human-centered cultures that support sustainable performance, retention, and trust.

Leadership without Self-Awareness

Can you afford the costs?

One of the biggest reasons we lose our best people isn't because they stop caring, but because they're watching you quietly fall apart and assuming that's what success requires.

What will the people around you think when they see you...

  • Skip lunch

  • Cancel therapy appointments

  • Apologize for taking parental leave

  • Work through grief

Here's what those around you learn:

"This is what it takes to matter here."

We can't keep thinking of self-awareness as a "nice-to-have" anymore.Because the truth is that choosing yourself isn't selfish. It's leadership.It's the skill that determines whether you build cultures people stay for or cultures people survive until they can leave. Our capacity to lead, to connect, to retain the people we need most—it's limited by our willingness to be curious about ourselves.To look at the stories we inherited and ask: Are these mine? Or am I just carrying someone else's baggage?

2026 Signature Keynote

Pivot & Shimmy

Learn The Leadership Skill That Builds A Culture People Stay For

Organizations don't lose talent because people stop caring. They lose talent because leaders unintentionally model unsustainable ways of working-and call it "professionalism."In this keynote, I show the process for becoming a self-aware leader who can build trust, keep people engaged, and stop themselves from burning out.When leaders learn to choose themselves with intention, they give their teams permission to do the same.What The Audience Gets:

  • Deep understanding of how leadership behavior drives retention-and why "leading by example" backfires when the example is burnout

  • Ability to identify unconscious patterns in narratives that keep them stuck in cycles of that lead to burnout

  • A powerful, memorable, and immediately usable framework for self-awareness and decision making clarity

  • A complete toolkit to create a culture where people feel valued and want to stay

"Erica delivered one of the most thoughtful conversations we’ve hosted in our Whole-Life Leadership speaker series at Harvard. Through captivating storytelling, she precisely named challenges many leaders quietly carry—burnout, identity shifts, and the pressure to keep performing through life’s transitions. Her Pivot & Shimmy framework offered a practical and empowering way to navigate those moments with small, courageous steps forward.Erica brings authenticity, clarity, and powerful storytelling to the stage. Her message resonated deeply with our community of student parents, and the conversation continued long after the event. I highly recommend her to organizations looking to support resilient, human-centered leadership."

Victor Zhao
Co-President, Parents@Harvard

Continue to learn more about me