Meet Lisa
Lisa Anna Palmer is a Canadian leadership coach, author, speaker, and founder of Light Your Leadership Inc., based in Ontario. With a background spanning organizational renewal, human resources, and executive coaching, her work centers on servant leadership, human connection, and creating leadership experiences rooted in compassion and purpose.
There is a quiet steadiness to the way Lisa Anna Palmer speaks about leadership now. It doesn’t come from certainty or polish, but from lived experience from exhaustion, fear, recovery, and the slow return to hope. Leadership, for her, is no longer something you perform. It’s something you practice gently, starting from the inside out.
She has spent decades inside organizations and alongside leaders, but what drives her today is not scale or recognition. It is the belief that leadership, when rooted in humanity, can heal workplaces, communities, and people including the leader themselves.
The Long Way In
Lisa’s professional life began early. At 21, while studying psychology, she was hired by a Big Six firm and placed into its Organizational Renewal Group. It was 1992, and she moved quickly graduating into a full-time role, fast-tracked to Senior Consultant. From the outside, the trajectory looked impressive. Inside, it was demanding in ways she didn’t yet have language for.
She later moved into federal Crown Corporations, spending nearly fourteen years in increasingly senior human resources roles, including time at the director level. These years gave her deep exposure to systems, power dynamics, and the realities of leadership inside large institutions. They also planted quieter questions about sustainability, alignment, and the cost of constant performance.
By the time she founded her own consultancy in 2011, Lisa had already lived several professional lives. Entrepreneurship was not an escape. It was an attempt to build something truer.
Burning Out, Waking Up
Lisa doesn’t speak about burnout as a single breaking point. For her, it arrived in cycles.
“I burned out three times by the age of 38, and I didn’t want others to suffer like I did“
What followed was not immediate clarity, but reflection and the realization that leadership sat at the center of both harm and healing.
Through self-study, observation, and coaching, she came to a simple but demanding conclusion: “Leadership was at the heart of everything, whether good or bad.” And what separated meaningful leadership from destructive leadership wasn’t strategy it was love for humanity.
She began to articulate a framework rooted in compassion, courage, competence, and creativity. These weren’t abstract values. They were survival tools, forged through illness, stress, and learning how to set boundaries in a world that rarely rewards them.
“I’ve learned that life is about periods of contraction and expansion, Every few years, I go through a challenging cycle and I emerge with an urge to reinvent myself and the work I do.”
Even now, she says she is emerging from one of those contractions navigating health challenges and economic uncertainty while listening carefully for what comes next.
Fear, Voice, and the Moment the Room Fell Silent
Two moments stand out as markers of transformation.
One came when Lisa stood on a stage, looking out at over 600 faces. For decades, public speaking had terrified her. Fear had shaped her choices in ways she didn’t always recognize. That day, the fear was gone. Not managed, gone.
The second moment was quieter, heavier. When her close friend, Kenyan philanthropist Geoffrey Kihara Ndoigo, passed away, he left behind a legacy of care for children he had rescued from the streets. Lisa was entrusted with carrying that torch forward together with his mother Christine Ndoigo. Lisa had co-founded Mustakabali Wetu–Our Future with Geoffrey in 2022, and together with his family—and championed by the late Senator William Cheptumo—worked to establish the organization as an international NGO providing nutrition, education, and early leadership development for children who are in great need.
Leadership, in that moment, stopped being theoretical. It became stewardship.
Building Work That Leaves Room for Humanity
Today, Lisa’s work spans coaching, speaking, writing, and community-building. Light Your Leadership Inc. is not designed to produce louder leaders, but more grounded ones. She creates spaces where people can slow down, ask better questions, and reconnect with why they lead at all.
“What sets great leaders apart is their love for humanity, And their ability to connect at the human level.”
Her clients often come to her depleted successful, but tired. What they leave with isn’t just strategy, but a sense of calm and possibility. Lisa defines success not by outcomes alone, but by internal shifts: fear giving way to steadiness, isolation replaced by connection.
Alongside this work, she launched her book Light A Fire In Their Hearts and the LYLTalks podcast, both extensions of the same impulse: to make leadership feel accessible, honest, and human.
The Work That Comes Next
Lisa’s vision is expanding again — this time outward. Her next chapter is the creation of the Light Your Leadership Institute, a nonprofit designed to make leadership development accessible to underserved communities.
“This feels much more aligned with my calling and my character,“
The institute will operate as a social enterprise, offering leadership foundations that open pathways to meaningful work, entrepreneurship, and community service. It is a natural evolution of everything she has learned about burnout, resilience, and the responsibility that comes with influence.
“I believe the leadership that will help us realize our full human potential is anchored in love for humanity, A leadership that envisions hope and then makes hope happen.”
Remembering Who You Are
When asked what message she would pass on, Lisa doesn’t hesitate. It’s the same one her coach once gave her: “Remember who you are.”
In a time when compassion can feel radical, her work is a reminder that leadership doesn’t have to harden us. It can soften us instead and through that softness, create real change.
Lisa Anna Palmer’s life and work suggest that leadership, at its best, is not about standing above others. It’s about standing with them fully human, imperfect, and willing to care.
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