My journey from a kidnapping victim to a Fortune 500 strategist has reshaped how I think about disruption.
The asymmetric smile on my face tells only part of my story. The rest unfolds in boardrooms across America, where I teach entrepreneurs and executives the same lessons I learned in my darkest moments: that survival isn't enough; you have to disrupt, or your dreams die.
It's Tuesday evening, and I am doing what I do best: distributing disruptions and connecting dots others can't see, whether it's a new business venture, a leadership training programme, or a trauma response. On my laptop is a customised AI adoption timeline for a major logistics company; in my hand, my phone buzzes with a text from a domestic violence survivor working through her trauma. Two different worlds, same underlying principle: Unresolved pain, whether it's personal or corporate, doesn't stay quiet. It sabotages everything.
My transformation began with violation. As a child, a trusted family friend shattered my innocence, planting seeds of self-doubt that would grow like weeds. Years later, those weeds nearly choked out my future entirely when a gunman's bullet tore through my face, followed by thirty days of captivity that pushed me into the depths of depression.
Each wound tried to script the same lie. That my future was now limited. That I was damaged goods.
But in the soil of that suffering, something unexpected took root: a revolutionary understanding of how trauma operates and how it can be transformed into something powerful.
My breakthrough came not in a therapist's office but in America's corporate corridors. I watched billion-dollar brands crumble for the same reason people do: they couldn't imagine a different future. Companies clinging to legacy systems the way trauma survivors cling to familiar pain. Both were choosing slow death over uncertain change.
The insight was electrifying. If trauma and corporate stagnation operated by the same rules, perhaps they could be healed by the same principles.
God Reveals Our Worth, GROW
My approach centres on a simple but profound word: G.R.O.W., which stands for 'God Reveals Our Worth'. This was the catalyst for my change from a depressed victim to a master disruptor. I refused to allow my past to control my future, my fears to steal my life, or my asymmetric smile to determine my worth. So, I began trusting God, and He began a good work within me. First, He began to prepare my heart; I had to recognise what was rooted in pain. Until you expose the root, you keep watering fear instead of faith.
After experiencing so many violations from people I trusted, I had to begin cutting away the anger, shame, and hypervigilance that block healthy growth. For me, this meant the daily act of releasing resentment after being shot. This wasn't a quick fix; it wasn't a prayer-and-prosper situation, but instead, a deliberate and daily practice.
During my growth journey, I enrolled in the College of Biblical Studies, where I began planting forgiveness and creating space for mercy. I discovered a tool that led to my greatest breakthrough: that forgiveness isn't about excusing the pain that people put me through but refusing to be defined by it.
The next step was to begin harvesting my purpose: asking the daring question, now that I had pruned anger, unforgiveness, pain, and shame, what should grow within me? That's when God gave me visions for businesses, ministries, and ventures that disrupt yesterday's pain into a lifetime of purpose, which is to help others foster the power of disruption as well.
The same principles that help individuals heal from trauma, I discovered, can save companies from the future of AI and automation disruptions. Doubt, when left unexamined, causes executives to double down on yesterday's models. It's the corporate version of trauma, clinging to legacy belief systems while watching other companies surpass you to the point of irrelevance.
My timing couldn't be more crucial. As artificial intelligence reshapes entire industries, companies face their own version of trauma: the terror of obsolescence. My work with entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies involves guiding global clients through scenario planning for AI adoption, helping them see disruption not as destruction but as disciplined cultivation.
The technology wave will redraw job descriptions faster than any strategy memo. Teams that practise ongoing disruption forecasting, pruning old models, planting new skill sets, mirror the personal resilience we cultivate in trauma recovery.
The impact extends far beyond individual healing or corporate profits. I argue that trauma-shaped leaders often micromanage, avoid necessary conflict, or chase validation through unsustainable growth. Meanwhile, companies stuck in outdated metrics amplify employee anxiety and spill stress into family life.
You can't address just one dimension. Home and work are interconnected gardens. Weeds in one will eventually strangle the other.
Living the Revolution
Today, I embody my own teachings. Monday might find me mapping AI and automation opportunities and risks for clients; Tuesday, walking a survivor through forgiveness exercises. The context switches only reinforce my thesis: purposeful disruption is the common antidote to both personal stagnation and corporate irrelevance.
My story tracks a demanding but hopeful path: expose the root, prune what no longer serves, sow mercy, and bear fruit that blesses others. In the marketplace, that fruit becomes adaptive product lines and workplaces that thrive amid automation. In personal life, it's renewed relationships and purpose-driven ventures that transform pain into a life never imagined, a life beautifully, intentionally, and continuously disrupted.
My message is both challenge and invitation: Ignore the weeds, and both joy and empires decline. Cultivate disruption, and even the deepest wounds and oldest brands can become fertile ground for new and consistently renewed life.
Artificial intelligence threatens to make entire industries obsolete overnight, and unresolved trauma continues to sabotage dreams, but I offer a radical proposition: what if our greatest wounds and most frightening changes are actually invitations to something extraordinary?
The asymmetric smile has become my signature, not of victimhood but of victory. It's a daily reminder that sometimes the most beautiful gardens grow in the most unlikely soil, and that true disruption isn't about destruction at all.
It's about having the courage to prune what’s no longer thriving to plant something new.
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