Leilani spent more than two decades in corporate sales and leadership, navigating high-stakes environments, leading teams, and closing multi-million-dollar deals. But behind every win, she saw what most companies were missing: connection. In rooms focused on performance metrics, she paid attention to what moved people, what shut them down, and what made them feel seen.
She knows the systems because she’s worked in them. But she didn’t stay there. Instead, she rewrote the script.
Armed with a journalism degree, master’s level courses in fiction and a lifelong belief in the transformative power of language, Leilani began telling stories, first through fiction, then on stages and in rooms where change needed to happen. Her novel, After the Burn, is a portrait of ambition, friendship, identity, and the quiet rebellions women stage every day in spaces not built for them. It’s fiction, yes, but like all of Leilani’s work, it’s grounded in truth.
Today, Leilani speaks, teaches, and writes at the intersection of story, empathy, and leadership. Whether she’s guiding professionals in a keynote or crafting narratives that help organizations reconnect with their people, her work offers more than insight, it creates transformation. She believes in the boldness of empathy to shift culture. In the power of personal narrative to bridge divides. In creativity as an act of leadership.
But this work isn’t about her.
It’s about you. Your team. Your story.
