Episode Summary

After a meaningful pause, Nicole Cruz is back — and she's brought her whole story with her. In this reintroduction episode, Nicole shares the arc that led her from a decade in corporate America to building a coaching practice rooted in cultural wisdom, lived experience, and one defining question: what does it actually mean to be fully alive?

If you've ever arrived at the destination you worked your whole life toward — and felt something was still missing — this episode is for you.

What We Cover

• Why Nicole stepped away from the podcast (hint: she became a mom 🍼)

• Growing up as the daughter of Filipino immigrants and the unspoken "script" that came with it

• Over 10 years in corporate — sales, marketing, and CSR at a major healthcare company — and what it cost her to succeed there

• The moment of clarity that made staying impossible

• Leaving her six-figure career, traveling the world for a year, and what she found on the other side

• How she discovered coaching — and why it felt like coming home

• Why she specifically serves women of color and first and second-generation leaders

• The role of culture, conditioning, and white supremacy in the work she does with clients

• How becoming a mother has deepened the meaning of this work

Key Quotes

"Once you know, and once you feel, and once you see it — you can't unsee it. You can't unfeel it. You can't unknow it."

"It was the first time in my life I really experienced pure joy, euphoria. This is what living feels like. This is what it feels like to be fully alive."

"The script didn't include — okay, what do you do once you get there? When there doesn't feel the way you thought it would."

"The soft skills I thought weren't as valuable were actually the ones that really lend themselves to this work."

"This work is contributing to the world I want my daughter to grow up in."

About Nicole

Nicole Cruz is a leadership and life coach, TEDx speaker, and mama. She works with women of color and first and second-generation leaders who have mastered achievement but are missing fulfillment. With nearly eight years of experience in culturally-informed coaching, Nicole helps her clients get radically honest about what they want now — and reorient their lives around that vision.

Connect with Nicole

• Instagram: @nicolecruzcoaching

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolecruzmba/

• Email: [email protected]

• Explore 1:1 coaching: DM Nicole on Instagram or send her an email

If This Episode Resonated With You

If you heard yourself somewhere in Nicole's story — in the immigrant household, in being the only person of color in the room, in arriving and still feeling like something's missing — you're in the right place.

And if you're sitting with a voice asking is this it? is there more? — that voice is worth listening to.

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