Hi, I'm Shauna.
I’m the founder of Presence Without Permission. My work is focused on what happens to the way we participate when discomfort, conflict, or power dynamics enter a room, and how preparation can help us remain present when they do.
My perspective and methodology have been shaped by more than two decades of corporate consulting, the experience of advocating alongside my husband through cancer, and my mediation training and certification,
My Story
For more than two decades, I have worked in corporate environments where I manage stakeholders, navigate competing priorities, negotiate, work through conflict, and have difficult conversations in rooms where hierarchy and influence shape what happens next. I listen carefully, ask questions to understand, challenge assumptions, evaluate what I am hearing, choose my words deliberately, and remain engaged in decisions.
It is also where I first started thinking about presence.
Along the way, I became interested in the idea of “executive presence” and how easily presence can become something judged from the outside. I began questioning what presence actually meant, and whether it was something another person could decide you possessed at all.
Recently, when my husband was diagnosed with cancer for a second time, presence took on a different meaning altogether.
I found myself in rooms where expertise, urgency, and institutional status carried enormous weight, and where it could be easy to defer simply because someone else knew more.
The situation itself was profoundly unfamiliar and uncomfortable, but there was something unexpectedly familiar about navigating it. The power dynamics felt familiar. So did the need to ask good questions, manage competing perspectives, evaluate information, speak up, and stay engaged when the outcome mattered.
Once I recognized that connection, I realized that more than two decades in corporate consulting had prepared me, in ways I never could have anticipated, to advocate alongside my husband and navigate his care.
The experience changed the way I understood presence. It was no longer about how someone appeared to other people or whether they projected the qualities someone else associated with confidence or leadership. It became about staying engaged and participating intentionally.
That realization became the catalyst for Presence Without Permission.
That experience also deepened my interest in conflict, negotiation, and what happens when people enter a conversation with different interests, assumptions, and perceptions of power. It led me to pursue formal mediation training and certification. I am now a Florida Supreme Court Certified Circuit Court Mediator, giving me another lens for understanding the dynamics I had already encountered in corporate environments and through healthcare advocacy and caregiving.
Today, I think about presence very differently from the way I first encountered it as “executive presence.”
Presence is not being unaffected by the room. It is remaining able to participate intentionally even when the dynamics in the room affect you.
And that is where Without Permission comes from.
You do not need another person’s title, expertise, status, or approval to grant you permission to be present in a conversation, especially one that affects you. That does not mean dismissing expertise or pretending power differences do not exist. It means remaining an active participant: listening, questioning, thinking, choosing your words, and using your own judgment.
That is Presence Without Permission. And it is why I do this work.
Credentials & Professional Background
Formal training and professional experience that inform my work in communication, conflict, and difficult dynamics.
Florida Supreme Court Certified Circuit Court Mediator
Florida Dispute Resolution Center
Certified Professional Coach (CPC)
M.A., Instructional Design & Technology
University of Central Florida
Accelerating Change Readiness & Agility
University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business
20+ Years of Corporate Consulting Experience
Learning and development, human performance, stakeholder management, negotiation, conflict, and difficult conversations
Let's Connect
Interested in working together, inviting me to speak, or connecting professionally? I’d be glad to hear from you.”
