About Vanessa Loder
Vanessa Loder is an inspirational keynote speaker and sought-after expert on women’s leadership, mindfulness, stress management and sustainable success. Vanessa’s work has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, the Huffington Post and Glamour magazine, among others. Her TEDx talk “How To Lean In Without Burning Out” has over 150,000 views, over 14,000 people have taken Vanessa’s paid online courses and her guided meditations have been streamed over 787,000 times globally.
Vanessa provides in-person and online educational tools that support high potential women leaders. By distilling powerful techniques for meditation, visualization, and self-compassion into simple tools and daily practices, Loder teaches women how to quiet their minds, set boundaries without feeling guilty, let go of the pressure to be “perfect”, and get more of what they want in life.
Vanessa has taught at AirBnB, Bain & Co, Castlight Health, Charles Schwab, Cisco, Flextronics, Goldman Sachs, Google, LinkedIn, Mattel, PwC, Salesforce, Stanford Graduate School of Business, StubHub!, The North Face, Uber, YouTube, and many other organizations.
After spending close to a decade working in finance on Wall Street and Silicon Valley, Vanessa felt that she had climbed to the top of the wrong ladder. Her personal transformation and soul awakening, subsequent research and work have led to thousands of brilliant, overwhelmed women finding their way back to soul.
Vanessa received her MBA from Stanford University and her BA from Columbia University where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude. Loder is a certified Executive Coach, trained in Neuro-Linguistic Programming, past life regression and Vipassana meditation with Jack Kornfield. Vanessa currently lives in Lafayette, CA with her husband and two children, who remind her to take “mommy time-outs” when she’s about to lose her marbles. Visit her at www.vanessaloder.com.
My Story
My whole life I’ve been an overachiever in the traditional ways: I graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude from Columbia University and upon graduation, I thought about joining the Peace Corps, but instead, I drove myself to take the most prestigious job I could find. I started working in investment banking on Wall Street, putting in really long hours, coming home and drinking a little too much wine or zoning out in front of the television because I felt so drained and exhausted from work. I applied to business school and was accepted to both Harvard and Stanford. I had my whole perfect life planned out.
Then my mom got sick. She was diagnosed with stage three ovarian cancer. I took time off work to take care of her and then deferred business school one year. After she finished her chemo, she encouraged me to do something for myself before heading off to Stanford, so I followed my heart and went to live in a remote village in Ghana, West Africa, to volunteer as a teacher.
I didn’t know it at the time, but that trip changed my life. I ended up raising money to build a school, and my former colleagues from Wall Street helped fund the project. In that moment I knew I wanted to do something to change the world and that people in the business world had the resources to support positive change. But it took me more time to make it a reality.
Upon graduating from Stanford, I was scared to start my own business. I told myself I was scared because of all the debt and expenses I had incurred as a student. I told myself it would be more “responsible” to take a job working in private equity to pay off my loans. I told myself, and everyone else, I would only stay in that job one year. Those were all lies. It took me over three years to realize that was just the fear—my fear of failure—talking.
I made a lot of money at the private equity firm and was on track to be a partner. Everything looked great on paper, and yet inside, I was miserable and unfulfilled. But this was the path I had mapped out for my life. I had followed my plan for success perfectly. So why wasn’t I happy?
I realized that I had been following my mind, my ego and my wallet instead of my heart or my intuition. That needed to change, but I was so turned around, I didn’t know how to begin to follow my heart.
I started with one question: What is it I really want? That question turned into more questions. I started working with a coach and learned what it means to take responsibility for my life, my happiness and my career.
To me, taking responsibility means asking that question, “What is it I really want?” and not letting the fear stop me. It means making a big commitment to doing whatever it takes to create the change I deeply desire.
So that’s what I did. I quit my high-paying job in finance and started my own business in 2010. I realized that what I am most passionate about is supporting other people, especially women, in learning how to take responsibility for THEIR lives. I want everyone to experience the happiness that I’ve now created in my life. I want everyone to have these tools.
I’ve made it my life’s mission to empower other women. I founded my own business, where I run group coaching programs, retreats and corporate workshops to support other people who are ready to make this leap, the leap into a life of meaning.
I could have played it safe. Instead, I’m living my dream. It took some scary steps to get here, and it was so worth the journey. So now I ask you, what is it you really want? And what are you willing to do to make it happen?