I spent over eighteen years in multinational advertising agencies— an industry built on performance, ambition, and winning.
I watched brilliant people rise and lead to the highest levels, but the higher they climbed, the more they adapted to what the environment rewarded - disconnecting from their greatest contribution.
It wasn't a lack of talent. It was the masks people learned to wear to succeed.
Alongside advertising, I spent fourteen years deepening a different kind of work — human behavior, adaptations, and consciousness-based leadership, across 5,000 transformation sessions worldwide.
Eventually, my two worlds converged: what organizations experience as leadership or culture problems is often something deeper — the adaptations people bring into the workplace, and the systems reinforcing them. That's why I created The Unmasked Workplace.
Stories of Transformation
Rishma keeps it real. Her approach to teaching unmasking work is practical and results-oriented — comfort comes from feeling empowered and equipped with tools to regulate myself when life happens. She instills in leaders the kindness to rediscover ourselves and the courage to take our teams along. It feels easy to get real with Rishma because she's as real as it gets.
I'm glad I chose her as my coach. It makes me feel good in my own skin and in my power.
Georgina Angsanto
Creative Director, Founder of Life Well Lit
Most leadership interventions treat behavior as the problem. I treat it as the symptom.
My work sits one level deeper — in the adaptations people built to succeed, and never had the chance to question.
That's where The Unmasked Workplace operates and it's why leaders come here after the surface-level fixes stop working. It reveals and transforms those adaptations so performance becomes sustainable, not because people are performing to belong, but because the organization is designed to bring out people's best - not their masks.
Lets work together
- Rishma