Hi, I'm Agnes
I'm a strategic advisor + coach for senior tech leaders navigating burnout, career transitions, and the human side of AI-era transformation.
I work with architects, engineering directors, technical leads, information and knowledge managers — the people who've spent a decade or two being the most competent person in the room, and are now quietly wondering what any of it is actually for.
I know this experience from the inside. I spent 25 years in IT as a developer, architect, and consultant. Microsoft MVP since 2008. Microsoft Regional Director since 2020 - credentials awarded by Microsoft to recognised experts in the field. Founder of Search Explained, where I've consulted Fortune 500 companies and global enterprises across Europe, North America, Southeast Asia and beyond on enterprise search, Microsoft 365, knowledge management, and AI-era information architecture.
From the outside, I had the career that was supposed to feel like enough.
It didn't.
When the job you're good at stops being enough
On paper, everything is fine. You're senior. You're respected. You deliver.
But the work that used to energize you now drains you. You're optimizing for a set of goals you don't remember choosing. You're performing — and you know it. And somewhere in the gap between what you project and what you actually feel, something has quietly broken.
This isn't burnout in the dramatic, collapse-in-the-office sense. It's more like a slow disconnection. You're still functioning. You're still delivering. But you've stopped being able to remember why.
For years, I hid my fear and overwhelm behind a facade of confidence.
I know how it feels to be paralyzed, not able to do anything. I know how this feels because I lived it for long...
Back then, I did what IT people do: I tried to analyse my way out. To solve this like just another new problem. I read the right things, talked to the right people, built the right frameworks. And none of it worked - because this isn't a problem you can solve with your brain.
What eventually worked was slower and messier.
Long walks. Hard conversations. A lot of unlearning. A move to a new country, a divorce, and eventually - clarity. Not the kind you plan for, but the kind that shows up when you stop performing.
That process is now my methodology. I call it the Four Stages: Realize → Explore → Claim → Embody.
I built it from my own transition, and I've guided dozens of clients through theirs.
Two kinds of work, one intersection
That inner work — and the 25 years of leading complex tech projects before it - taught me something I now build my practice around:
The hardest problems in tech are never technical.
Culture, fear, identity, psychology - these are what derail transformations, careers, and people.
It's why I work two ways.
As a coach, I work 1:1 with senior tech leaders through my Four Stages framework — to rebuild self-trust, find clarity, and move forward on their own terms.
As an advisor, I work with the teams driving AI adoption inside organizations — leadership, knowledge management, internal communications, and change management — on the human side of AI transformation.
I'm deliberately both. The work senior tech leaders need most right now lives at that intersection — and you need someone who can hold both at once: not a technology expert who "gets people," not a coach who "understands tech," but someone for whom both are native.
Ready to do this differently?
If you're a senior tech leader navigating burnout, a career transition, or the strain of AI-era change - or a CTO/CEO whose team is showing the strain - let's talk. The first conversation is real, and free.
Take a slow breath.
One step at a time.
You are not broken. You are becoming.