Our Approach
How we think, how we show up, and why it works
Every woman we work with arrives carrying the same thing: something she has been meaning to do, say, write, or become — and a long list of reasons it hasn’t happened yet. Our approach is built around a single conviction: the reasons are not the problem. The identity is. We work on that first. Everything else follows.
Our Story
The ServantEDGE began with a personal reckoning.
I had spent decades leading — across 60 countries, through government and diplomacy, in boardrooms and villages and every kind of organization in between. I was good at it. And for years, I told myself that was enough.
But there was something I kept not doing. A book I kept not writing. A voice I kept making smaller. A version of myself I kept editing before anyone could see her.
When I finally stopped waiting — when I joined a book collaboration that became an international bestseller, when I started speaking about what I actually believed, when I stopped performing and started being present — everything changed. The spark was back, and I realized how much I’ve been self-editing all these years.
That experience is why The ServantEDGE exists. Most of the women we work with don’t have a craft or an idea problem. They have an identity problem. They write beautifully and won’t call themselves writers. They have a business idea but don’t know how to start. They have something important to say and don’t believe a public stage is really possible. They’re ready for the next chapter and have no map for getting there.
We start with the identity — the shift from “someday” to “this is who I am.” Our signature offer are international or domestic immersion experiences, because they are the most effective act we can do to shift who we are. Integrated in all of our work is skill building – a type of scaffolding so that the support beams are in place as the idea becomes real. It’s everything you need to stop circling and start.
We are a woman-owned company based in Washington state. We work through coaching, immersive experiences, circles, and training. Our clients are women (and some men – because we are that fabulous) with something to say and a plan they haven’t made yet. We help them make it.
— Stephanie Mikulasek, CEO and Founder of The ServantEDGE
You are not done yet.
Our Orientation
Three frameworks shape everything we design and deliver. They reflect not just what we do but how we think, how we listen, and how we show up. They are the root of what makes our work different from every other coaching or training or immersion program you’ve encountered.
The EDGE Principles
- Experiential: Real challenges in real contexts. Learning happens through direct engagement, not observation.
- Deliberate: Intentional design with meaningful outcomes. Nothing is incidental.
- Growth: Opening pathways and crossing thresholds. We work at the edges where change becomes possible.
- Embedded: Building capacity for sustained development. Transformation doesn’t end when the engagement does.
The BRIDGE Framework™
BRIDGE™ is our operating framework for navigating complexity. Where you face competing demands, unclear paths, and moments of disorienting transition, BRIDGE provides a shared language for what we’re navigating and a deliberate path through it.
Rather than offering a linear process or a fixed set of tools, BRIDGE works with the actual texture of complex situations: the assumptions that go unexamined, the generational and cultural differences that create friction, the gap between what you intend and what others’ experience, the space between where you are and where you want to go – even when you doubt yourself. It helps individuals and groups move from uncertainty and reactivity toward coherence and intentional action.
When organizations work with BRIDGE, they gain more than a framework. They gain a shared vocabulary for navigating difficulty together, which reduces rework, strengthens alignment, and protects the time, energy, and trust that complex work demands.
The Transformative Servant Model™
The Transformative Servant Model™ (TSM) describes how our work unfolds in practice. It is not a product, not a workshop, and not something sold separately. It is the shared rhythm that runs through every ServantEDGE offer, ensuring that learning is integrated, human-centered, and sustained over time rather than experienced as an event and quickly forgotten.
TSM moves through four phases that mirror how genuine transformation actually happens in people and organizations: Alignment, in which we establish a deeper understanding of our values, purpose, and context; Awareness, in which we surface how we perceive others – and how others see us; Action, in which new insight becomes effective, deliberate, practiced behavior; and Absorption, in which reflection and learning are integrated and carried forward.
These phases are not strictly linear. They recur, deepen, and build on one another across the life of an engagement. What TSM ensures is that no stage is skipped: we don’t move to action before we have clarity, and we don’t leave without a path to sustain what we’ve learned.
Our Team
The women behind The ServantEDGE have lived what they teach. We are former diplomats, military officers, executives, coaches, researchers, and communicators — and every one of us has stood at the threshold this work is about. We don’t arrive with all the answers. We arrive with experience, rigorous training, and a genuine commitment to walking alongside the women we serve.
Stephanie Mikulasek
CEO and Founder
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A former U.S. Diplomat, Stephanie Mikulasek is Managing Director and Founder of The ServantEDGE, a company that designs and facilitates transformational international immersion experiences, executive coaching, and experiential leadership development. Drawing from decades of global leadership, academic scholarship, and immersive transformation work, Stephanie blends wisdom, wit, and depth to inspire leaders and teams to challenge the illusion of certainty, disrupt ineffective patterns, invite radical belonging, and rediscover what matters most.
Stephanie holds a Master of Public Administration in International Management and a Master of Arts in World Religions and Cultures, and is currently a PhD candidate at George Mason University researching how transformational leaders are developed through immersion experiences. A certified Executive Coach from Georgetown University and a member of the International Coaching Federation (ICF), she is also a certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher trained under Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach. She has studied with Dr. Richard Schwartz, Jennifer Garvey Berger, Jim Dethmer, and faculty at Harvard University, and has lived, traveled, and worked in over 60 countries.
A frequent guest on podcasts, Stephanie is sought after for her engaging and dynamic keynotes and workshops. She publishes weekly on Substack and LinkedIn, and her forthcoming book addresses managing multiple generations in the workplace, including AI.
Core Collaborators
Samantha Mathis
Director, Learning and Development
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Samantha Mathis is a global leadership, coaching, and learning development expert with more than 20 years of experience helping leaders, teams, and organizations thrive in complex, rapidly evolving environments. A retired officer of the Royal Air Force, she brings a rare combination of high-stakes leadership experience, resilience, and systems thinking to her work, forged across international development organizations, diplomatic services, government institutions, multinational corporations, and global professional services firms.
Samantha has designed and delivered leadership development programs across 35+ countries and six continents, leading multicultural teams and directing large-scale learning initiatives that give her first-hand insight into both the strategic and operational challenges leaders face. She is exceptionally skilled at building cross-cultural relationships and navigating the interconnected realities of today’s AI-enabled world.
Her Doctorate in International Education explored how leaders grow through virtual communities of practice, research that directly informs her evidence-based approach to leadership development, virtual learning design, and AI integration. As a certified coach, Samantha blends structured methodologies with immersive learning experiences that challenge leaders to grow, collaborate, and lead with greater self-awareness and cultural intelligence.
Donna Gandt
Principal Coach
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Donna Gandt is an executive and leadership coach and strategic advisor with more than 30 years of experience leading people, projects, and change. As a former Chief Revenue Officer and senior sales leader in the SaaS and professional services industries, she brings firsthand knowledge of the pressures, decisions, and dynamics her clients navigate every day, from managing high-performance teams to presenting in board rooms alongside equity partners and investors.
Donna’s coaching is grounded in empathy, authenticity, and a genuine focus on client outcomes. She helps leaders develop a confident sense of self, find deeper fulfillment in their roles, and build the clarity and inspiration to achieve their most important personal and professional goals.
A U.S. Navy veteran, Donna holds an MBA from Boston University, a Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology, and a Certificate in Leadership Coaching from Georgetown University. She is a member of the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and serves on boards supporting women’s leadership, entrepreneurship, and veterans’ organizations.
Susan Ellison-McGee
Director, Marketing and Strategic Communications
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Susan Ellison-McGee is a strategic communicator, storyteller, and narrative architect with more than two decades of experience bridging worlds: government and grassroots, corporate and community, local and global. As Director of Marketing and Strategic Communications for The ServantEDGE, she shapes the organization’s voice and amplifies the ideas, stories, and leaders that inspire courageous leadership, human connection, and purposeful growth.
Her career includes senior communications roles with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. Department of State, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and international organizations working across Asia, Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and the United States. Susan has spent her career doing what The ServantEDGE is built to do: helping people see across difference, find common ground, and act with greater clarity and intention.
Susan has worked across four continents and dozens of cultures, helping governments, international organizations, and communities tell stories that build understanding and move people to action. From coordinating emergency response communications at the World Bank in Bangladesh to launching a digital storytelling campaign that reached 50 million Pakistanis, to crafting award-winning public health messaging for seven million Washington state residents in 30+ languages, her work has always been about finding the human thread in complex situations and pulling it into the light.
Susan holds an M.A. in Communication from Southern New Hampshire University and a B.A. in International Relations and Economics from George Mason University. Outside of work, she is an avid birdwatcher, environmental steward, and devoted companion to her border collie, Whammo.
Monique Nathan
Director, Immersion Operations
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Monique Nathan is a global connector, international program manager, and operations specialist with a career built on bridging cultures, communities, and causes across the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Her work is rooted in service and driven by a deep commitment to building systems and partnerships that create lasting impact.
Monique’s international work includes coordinating earthquake relief in Nepal following the 2015 Gorkha earthquake, facilitating partnerships among local and international NGOs including One Heart World-Wide and BlinkNow/Kopila Valley, and founding a scholarship program for young women in rural Nepal that she continues to manage today. She has also led grassroots initiatives supporting Nepali artisans and worked across maternal and child welfare organizations on multiple continents.
Her broader career spans international program management, government, nonprofit leadership, and university recruitment, with a through-line of cross-cultural understanding and educational access. Fluent in Italian and Spanish, Monique brings to The ServantEDGE both the operational expertise and the lived experience of navigating complexity across cultures, exactly the spirit that defines our immersion work.
Monique holds an M.Sc. in Government from the London School of Economics and a B.A. in Political Science from UC San Diego.
Ready to explore how we might work together?
If something here resonates — if you recognize yourself in what we’ve described — we’d welcome a conversation. No preparation required and no pitch waiting on the other end. Just an honest talk about where you are, what’s in the way, and whether what we do can help. Curiosity is enough to begin.