Ben & Jamesa - Leadership Coaching
Overview
We’ve spent our lives working with people and caring about the communities we’re part of. We’ve seen how much good organizations can do, and we’ve also seen how easily the way people work together can get in the way of that good work.
We started Ben & Jamesa because we love helping organizations become better places to work and better members of their communities. We genuinely get a kick out of this work: sitting with leaders, asking good questions, figuring out what’s really going on, and helping people find better ways to work together.
Our approach is shaped by our different backgrounds, a shared belief in the power of relationships, and a long history of work focused on helping people and communities thrive.
Our Backgrounds
Jamesa
Jamesa is a licensed professional counselor, nationally certified therapist, and owner of Blue Lotus Counseling. For more than 20 years, she has supported people navigating relationships, healing, and change. Her work with individuals deepened her interest in how the places we live and work affect our lives—and how much depends on the quality of our relationships.
Today, she brings that experience into her work with leaders and teams. She listens closely, helps people process difficult experiences, and makes room for conversations that can be hard to have. She wants people to feel understood while also helping them see where something needs to change. Jamesa holds a deep passion for understanding the brain and how it shapes our thinking and feeling patterns, and how this in turn shapes our individual and collective lives.
Jamesa grew up in the Carolinas and is a proud Gamecock. She finds hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains deeply calming, especially when she returns home to a cup of homemade tea. She loves to read, especially Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, and Alice Walker. She recently moved to Asheville after two years living in Portugal with Ben and their children. She now has a long list of faraway places she would like to sojourn in and local recipes she would like to sample.
Ben
Ben founded an award-winning forensic counseling practice in 2008, focused on helping people change harmful behavior. Running an organization also brought him face to face with the challenges of leadership, workplace culture, and accountability. Today, he brings a direct, systems-oriented approach to helping leaders understand patterns and build workplaces where people can thrive.
Originally from England, Ben found his way to the Carolinas via California, Oregon, New York, and Pennsylvania. He is on the autism spectrum, loves cooking and growing microgreens, and spends much of his free time wandering through the woods or finding somewhere to swim. His favorite authors include James Baldwin, Elif Shafak, James McBride, and Thich Nhat Hanh.
Today, he speaks across North America and Europe to help leaders recognize unhealthy patterns and build workplaces where people can thrive, believing that healthier organizations contribute to healthier communities.
Together
We’re partners in both life and work, and we genuinely enjoy doing this together. We bring different perspectives, different strengths, and a shared curiosity about people. That combination makes our work better and, frankly, a lot of fun.
What matters most to us is helping caring people do good work in ways that make their organizations stronger and their communities better.