Welcome to Next Chapter Coaching: Helping Young Adults Find Clarity, Confidence, and Direction
I know what it feels like to be a young adult who feels stuck in the fog of youth, because for many years, I was one myself.
In 1996, I graduated college with a political science degree from an esteemed university—and absolutely no idea what to do with it. For the next four years, I sealed driveways, moved to Scotland for a few months, got a bartending license I never used, and eventually landed at a deli counter making tuna salad while my friends built careers and I wondered when things were going to click for me. I was fine, mostly. But that time of my life was also unsettling in a way that's hard to describe: that low-grade anxiety of feeling like everyone had been handed a map that I didn't have access to.
Of course, I wasn't broken. I wasn't lazy. I just didn't have anyone in my corner who could help me cut through the noise and figure out what I actually wanted. Eventually I found my way—back to school, into counseling, into the work I was clearly meant to do. But I've never forgotten what that fog felt like. And I think about it every time I sit down with a young adult who's living inside it right now.
That’s why I started Next Chapter Coaching.
I've been a school counselor in the Philadelphia area since 2003. I hold a Master's in Education degree in School Counseling from West Chester University. But the credential that matters most isn't on any wall — it's the thousands of conversations I've had with young people and their families through some of the most disorienting stretches of their lives.
About 15 years ago, I also started a mindfulness business, and since then I have led more than a hundred workshops, courses, and retreats for school districts, corporations, and community organizations across the Philadelphia region. Mindfulness taught me how to help people slow down, get honest with themselves, and find the clarity that's usually already there, just buried under the noise.
Next Chapter is where those two bodies of work finally come together. The counseling. Mindfulness. The experience of having felt lost myself, and having found my way. It's the most complete version of what I have to offer—and I think it's something the world actually needs right now.
The weight young adults are carrying
Something significant is happening with young adults, and it deserves to be named honestly.
Rates of anxiety, depression, and loneliness among people in their late teens and twenties have never been higher—a reality that was already alarming before 2020, and got significantly worse after it. Social isolation is pervasive, even among young people who appear well-connected online. Shame and self-doubt, which have always been part of growing up, now have faster and more efficient delivery mechanisms than ever before.
Underneath all of it is a structural disorientation that doesn't get talked about enough. Young adulthood is the first time in most people's lives when no one is handing them a schedule, a peer group, or a next step. The scaffolding that gave shape to every single day for eighteen-plus years is just gone. What's left is a wide-open future that's supposed to feel like freedom, and for a lot of young people feels more like falling.
None of this means something is wrong with them. It means they're human, and they could use some support. That's what Next Chapter is for.
How I help—and what makes it different
For almost everyone, one of the most valuable things I offer is simply being someone to talk to who isn't Mom or Dad. There's something genuinely powerful about having a trusted adult in your corner who has no stake in the outcome, who isn't going to panic, or push, or take it personally. Who is just going to listen, ask good questions, and help you figure out what you actually think. I've been that person for young people my entire career. At Next Chapter, it's the foundation everything else is built on.
From there, the work gets specific. For some young adults, the most pressing need is career clarity: figuring out what kind of work fits who they are, cutting through the noise of what they want, and building a concrete path toward something real. For others, it's the broader stuff: how to build a social life when the built-in community of school is gone or how to develop structure and routine when nobody's handing you a schedule. Most of the time, it's some combination of all of it.
Whatever the starting point, we build a game plan together, a set of small, specific, achievable steps designed around who that person actually is. Then I stay in it with them. Weekly check-ins. Honest conversation. The kind of steady accountability and encouragement that keeps things moving even when motivation dips, which it always does.
The mindfulness piece runs underneath all of it, and it matters more than people might expect. I'm not teaching meditation classes. But the self-awareness to understand what you're actually feeling, the self-compassion to stop beating yourself up for not having it all figured out, the ability to sit with uncertainty without being paralyzed by it—these are skills that make everything else possible.
I'm not going to pretend I have all the answers. I don't believe in that approach, and it doesn't work. What I do believe is that the young person sitting across from me already has the answers somewhere inside them. My job is to help them find those answers, trust them, and act on them.
When they do, that's not my win. It's theirs. That's the whole point.
Let's Talk
If any of this resonates — whether you're a young adult who's not sure where to start, or a parent who's not sure what to do — I'd love to have a conversation.
That's always where it begins.
Next Chapter is open for business. Let's figure out what's in yours.