LIFE TRANSITIONS
Retirement • Reinvention • Career or relationship change • Purpose • Identity • What’s next?
Learn More: LIFE TRANSITIONS
Susan K. LairdLife changes. Sometimes by choice. Sometimes without warning. Today Transitions provides thoughtful, experienced coaching and support for adults navigating change, making important decisions, and creating what comes next.
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Susan is a professional coach, registered nurse, Board Certified Patient Advocate, and Certified Grief Counselor with decades of experience in healthcare, leadership, communication, public health, and major life transitions. Her approach is compassionate, practical, confidential, and centered on helping clients identify what matters most.
Her approach is whole-person and non-formulaic. She helps clients step away from the noise, identify what matters, understand available choices, and decide what comes next with greater clarity and confidence.
Learn MoreOur Services
Retirement • Reinvention • Career or relationship change • Purpose • Identity • What’s next?
Learn More: LIFE TRANSITIONSClarify options • Identify priorities • Ask better questions • Make thoughtful, values-based decisions
Learn More: DECISIONS THAT MATTERSpeaker coaching • TED-style talks • Executive presentations • Complex information made clear • Workshops
Learn More: PRESENTATION & COMMUNICATION COACHINGHealthcare decisions • Patient advocacy • Preparing questions • Family conversations • Changing health needs
Learn More: HEALTH & HEALTHCARE ADVOCACYValues & priorities • Independence • Caregiving • Healthcare preferences • Family conversations
Learn More: AGING & END-OF-LIFE DECISION SUPPORTBereavement • Anticipatory grief • Caregiving • Life after caregiving • Loss connected to major change
Learn More: GRIEF, LOSS, & CAREGIVINGAlso Available
Testimonials
Susan provided a trusted space to reflect, explore new perspectives, and recognize my strengths. As my reflections led me toward a new course for my life, she seamlessly pivoted with me, helping me see new possibilities and approach my next chapter with greater clarity, confidence, and purpose. I’m truly grateful for her thoughtful guidance during such an important time of transition.
Marketing Manager
Susan helped me gain clarity during a pivotal moment. She guided me through the stress, decision-making, and emotional complexity of leaving a long federal career, helping me recognize that my leadership strengths were not limited to one environment. Instead, she encouraged me to confidently leverage and transfer those strengths into new professional arenas.
Entrepreneur
As a coach and mentor, Susan always tells you what you need to hear, even when the truth is uncomfortable. She is one of the rare people who can do this while still building you up. She brings a wealth of life and leadership experience to her work, which is foremost and always focused on you, the person she is talking to right now.
Teacher
After twenty-six years of federal service as a Lead Health Scientist, preparing for a major career transition felt both exciting and daunting. Working with Susan was transformative. As a former CDC leader herself, she understood my world immediately — the culture, the demands, and the identity that comes with decades of public health readiness and emergency response. Her insight into federal-to-civilian transitions provided exactly the grounding I needed.
Former CDC Leader
Her coaching gave me renewed confidence, clarity of purpose, and the practical mindset needed to step boldly into my next chapter. Susan is thoughtful, accessible, intuitive, and exceptionally skilled at guiding leaders through major life and career transitions. I am deeply grateful for her support.
Leadership Coaching Client
I had the pleasure of working with Susan in early 2026 on a professional project that carried enormous emotional weight for me. From our very first meeting, I knew I was in safe hands. Susan created a space where I felt comfortable opening up and sharing my experience honestly, trusting that she would help me shape it into a story that was both compelling and true to my voice. Over the course of several months, Susan guided me through the process of developing my project with incredible care, insight, and thoughtfulness. Not only did she help me find the right words, but her guidance also went far beyond editing. Her nurturing nature and supportive mentorship gave me the courage to be vulnerable and honest in ways I did not expect. The result was a piece of work I am deeply proud of, but the process itself became equally meaningful. Through our work together, I was able to reflect, heal, and begin to move forward. That growth has stayed with me and has allowed me to show up with greater presence and authenticity in other areas of my life. I am incredibly grateful for Susan’s guidance and for the lasting impact our work together has had on me.
Complimentary 20–30 minute introductory Zoom conversation.
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