Leadership shaped my career.
Learning to return to myself changed my life
For more than two decades, I’ve built brands, led teams, and tended to the inner work that sustains both. Along the way, I slowly realized I’d become so focused on showing up for everyone else that I’d stopped showing up for myself. The turning point came in recognizing the growing distance between the life I’d built and the way it felt to live it. Learning to close that gap changed everything.
What I believe
The work isn't becoming someone new. It's remembering who you've always been.
Over the years I've come to believe that the way we lead, love, and move through the world begins with the relationship we have with ourselves. When who you are on the inside aligns with how you live, something shifts. Decisions become clearer. Relationships become more honest. Life feels lighter, because you're no longer spending so much energy trying to be who you think you should be.
You already carry the wisdom you need. Sometimes life simply creates enough noise that you can no longer hear it. When you learn to trust yourself again, that return reaches far beyond you — it touches your family, your work, your community, and every life you influence.
And there is always a way back.
Lisa Schmidt
Someone I love once told me they missed me. I was standing right beside them.
That was when it landed. Not a career crisis. Not a breakdown. Something quieter and harder to name: the realization that I had been showing up for everyone around me while slowly disappearing from myself. The people closest to me were getting the capable version — the one who could manage everything — rather than the fully present one.
What that season was asking for wasn't that I work harder or become someone new. It was asking me to return. To close the distance between who I was on the inside and how I was moving through the world. Over time, I came to understand that as coherence.
I didn't need more achievement. I needed to trust myself again. To remember what had always been true beneath years of self-doubt, people-pleasing, and over-responsibility. I needed to come home to myself.
That journey became The Return Within. Today it's the work I share with others.
I hold the Associate Certified Coach (ACC) credential from the International Coaching Federation. I'm an author, a speaker, and a former corporate vice president. But more than any of those things, I'm someone who has walked this path. And I'd be honored to walk alongside you.
EDUCATION & CREDENTIALS
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B.S., Mass Communications (Marketing minor), St. Cloud State University
Certified Life Coach (CLC), Life Purpose Institute — ICF-accredited program
Associate Certified Coach (ACC), International Coaching Federation (ICF)
Lisa holds the ACC credential from the International Coaching Federation, which requires documented coach-specific training, supervised client coaching hours, mentor coaching, and assessment against the ICF Core Competencies and Code of Ethics.
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20+ years in B2B and B2C marketing leadership across agency and corporate environments, including vice president-level roles
Demand generation, marketing operations, and organizational transformation
Lisa spent more than two decades building brands and leading teams through change. That experience informs every coaching conversation: she knows firsthand what it costs to lead, and what becomes possible on the other side.
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Author, The Return Within
The Return Within: Reclaiming Presence and the Power to Lead is the heart of Lisa’s work
Begin the Conversation
There is always a way back to yourself.
If something here feels familiar, I’d be honored to walk alongside you. This work begins with a single, honest conversation.