Passion. Purpose. Commitment.

Jae’s motivation to found Simple Intentions came from a decade of corporate communication rolls, the last of which resulted in a not so graceful collapse, at work in front of her peers, from stress-related adrenal fatigue.  

Her passion for communication and this life-altering experience propelled her to research non-violent communication, human behavior, neuroscience, and mindfulness to create tools for professional transformation so that others may learn they have a different choice for how to live and work with greater awareness. In 2008, Jae founded Simple Intentions.  Her work has reached over 20,000 employees at multinational corporations such as Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Expedia, Pearson Education, and other leading companies.  Jae is a frequent contributor to  Mindful Magazine, Thrive Global and The Huffington Post on the topics of balance, soulful leadership, awareness and conscious communication. Her 7-part webseries on using awareness to develop work-life balance can be viewed on Udemy and her guided meditations can be found on InsightTimer.   

In 2015 she founded Seattle Wisdom, a community organization in Seattle committed to serving as hub for mindfulness practices in professional spaces.  Upon moving to Los Angeles in 2018 she founded “Hippie Night”, a monthly community event serving to create more conscious conversations in the film and television industry.   

Jae has a master’s degree in Communication Management from Colorado State University and a bachelor’s degree in Broadcast Communication from Metropolitan State College of Denver. She is a 2018 graduate of the Mindfulness Facilitation program at The Mindful Awareness Research Center within the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, where she has also acted as a teachers assistant for Mindfulness Practice and Theory an undergraduate credit course at UCLA.  

Jae is an Associate member of the International Mindfulness Teacher Association and though she does not consider herself a coach, she holds certificates in co-active coaching and organizational relationship systems coaching, empowering her ability to inspire and motivate people into action.

Her past studies include a 6-month Mindfulness Mastery intensive via the Lotus Institute, (in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh), as well as in-depth work with Marianne Williamson, ( A Course in Miracles), Deepak Chopra, (Silent Awakenings and Seduction of Spirit) Jack Kornfield (The Psychology of Loving Awareness). Jae is a certified yoga teacher as well as holds a 400-hour Ayurvedic Wellness Consultant certificate through the American Institute of Vedic Studies. Jae is also a long-time student of the work of Pema Chodron.  Additionally, Jae’s work is influenced by works of Marshal Rosenburg, John Medina, Ibram X. Kendi, Daniel Goldberg, Daniel Siegal, Brene Brown, Melanie Beatty, Eckhart Tolle, Nelson Mandella, Mahatma Gandhi, and the Dalai Lama.

Simple Intentions Philosophy

Simple Intentions is built on the philosophy that THE CHOICE IS YOURS™. Whether you are a leader, manager or an individual contributor, the choice is yours to start anywhere, at any point in your life, to create more awareness around the choices you make each day that either support or sabotage your desired outcomes professionally and personally.

Our work is based on The Awareness Framework™, the belief that behavior has an impact and there is a result – intentional or unintentional – related to that behavior. When people choose to be or are empowered to be more aware of their behavior, they are able to become more accountable in their roles, authentic in their communication and awake in their environments. The impact is the ability to be more innovative and productive in all things with the result being sustainable success for individuals and organizations.

Living with awareness is a skill. 

Awareness is your ability to see the world and how you show up in it. Most of us have not been taught the skill of awareness. Learning this skill happens in different stages, and these stages build on each other over time and with practice. The skill of awareness is important because it allows you to collect authentic information to help you make informed choices. Awareness is the ability to collect data with no judgment and no criticism of self or others. It’s pure observation of what is happening around you and your role in what is happening, and then using that information to make intentional choices.

The awareness framework is a tool to build, integrate and master the skill of awareness for individuals, teams and organizations. 

Within the framework there are three different levels of awareness.

NEW AWARENESS is about taking inventory of your world and understanding the impact of your behavior on the world around you and in you, things like what makes you happy, sad, stressed, or out of balance. New awareness is where you become aware you have choices. 

CONSCIOUS AWARENESS is being able to be more conscious about what it is you are seeing around you and understanding it in a different way. It is the place of knowing you have choices. Some days you might make choices that sabotage your desired outcomes; other days you might make choices that support your desired outcomes. In either case, you make the choice and you are aware that it is a choice. The second level helps build and integrate the skill of making intentional choices to create new patterns.

NATURAL AWARENESS is when you fully see your behavior patterns and internalize making choices that support your desired outcomes for balance, success and presence. This is where living in balance has become a lifestyle, an unconscious habit to make choices that support your desired outcomes. 

The Soulful Leader Philosophy

A soulful leader is a person of influence who is aware, accountable and empowered to have conscious conversations about issues that have been systematically ignored for years in places of work.  Things like the psychological and physiological impact of imbalance on employees, the lack of diversity of all kinds across all industries and toxic communication within work environments. 

Using awareness as a skill, radical accountability and conscious communication a soulful leader is able to unite work cultures for the purpose to rebuild, reshape and evolve work as we know it. 

Leading with awareness is a skill and it’s a skill not traditionally taught in business school or internal management programs.  Awareness is your ability to see the world and how you show up in it. Like a shadow, the impact of your behavior as a leader is cast over those who work for you and with you and depending on the type of shadow you cast, it can either sabotage or support the company culture and desired outcomes you are striving to create.   

My books, programs and consulting work are based on The Awareness Framework™, a model I develop in 2008. The Awareness Framework™ is a tool to build, integrate and master the skill of awareness. It is based on the belief that behavior has an impact and there is a result – intentional or unintentional – related to that behavior. When leaders choose to be or are empowered to be more aware of their behavior, they are able to become more accountable in their leadership role, authentic in their communication and awake to culture in their organization. The impact is the ability to influence and motivate self and others to be more innovative and productive in all things with the result being sustainable success for the betterment of your team, company, community and humanity.

Like learning any business skill, awareness happens in different stages, and these stages build on each other over time.  When leaders are aware of awareness and make the choice to lead with awareness, they can then become profoundly accountable for all the choices they make about and for the business as well as how the related conversations are had.    

Awareness and accountability then become the backbone for conscious conversations.  A conscious conversation is one in which people say what they mean, mean what they say and do it with respect and kindness.  In 2016, I developed The Conscious Communication Framework™, a tool that combines communication theory with principles from mindfulness and non-violent communication to empower people at all levels in the organization to take accountability for how and what they communicate in professional settings.    

A soulful leader knows that they are, in all moments, governed by the choice to see the world and how they show up in it and the responsibility to act on what they see to create a future that is different from the past.