COACHING
CONSULTING
SPEAKING
Hi, I’m Gillian Storyteller, Space Holder, Systems Thinker
Here’s a sense of who I am
The Seeker wants to understand the nature of reality. Philosophy & History, Leadership, Coaching, psychedelic medicine, meditation, and Somatic Experiencing. Curious: Is there something more I could see?
The Artist was neglected too early and came back with a roaring in mid life, trying to make sure I create before its “too late”. Music, storytelling, writing, creating perspective shifting experiences.
The Builder figures it out and gets it done. Analytical, strategic, resourceful, resilient. It has built organizations, teams, systems, businesses, projects and found a way forward where wasn’t one.
The Leader first emerged at summer camp - where I first felt really seen, and where the chance to do good for others was everywhere. Myself, teams, organizations, family, community - always beem about being out the best in myself and others.
The Lawyer is where I learned to see systems. At McGill, studying the same problem through different legal traditions showed me how systems shape outcomes - and our understanding of justice.
The Parent is my favorite. Parenting a neurodivergent kid has profoundly shaped me and my leadership, given me come of my greatest gifts, and left me with some powerful skills.
The Host makes room. Ask my friends and colleagues what my genius is, and they’ll say: being open and non-judgmental. I stay curious and meet you where you are.
The Beginner is willing to be wrong and not afraid to try. The beginner says: I don't know, I missed something, I hurt someone, I need help. It will fail - and celebrate it as a sign of growth. Not always comfortable. Always worth it.
My Career StoryA mix of professional depth and lived experience allows me to meet people where they are - with rigour and compassion, structure and creativity - and to support change that is not just understood, but lived.
At it’s core, my work is about intention and integration: moving beyond insight alone and into aligned ways of being and living.
Learning to stay present with discomfort, identifying our assumptions and the stories we tell, loosening the grip of self-doubt, and designing lives and ways of working that are coherently generative rather than extractive.
Gillian Nycum is a coach, speaker, facilitator, higher education consultant and lawyer whose career has moved between executive leadership, law, government, the creative industries and organizational transformation.
For eight years, she served as Registrar and Executive Director of Enrolment Services at McGill University, where she led a cross-functional team of 150 people and a $10M+ annual budget through significant technological, regulatory and organizational change. Her work included large-scale systems transformation, data governance and privacy, strategic enrolment management, organizational development and leadership.
Before McGill, Gillian spent 14 years as Owner and President of Long Play, a boutique artist-management and film-production company. She managed business and career strategy, executive produced albums, music videos, tours and independent films, and negotiated the contracts, partnerships and financing that brought creative projects into the world.
Her career has also included work in law, federal government, consulting and social-impact organizations.
That combination - systems and creativity, structure and emergence, strategy and human behaviour - continues to shape how she works.
Gillian is an ICF-certified coach and trained ADHD life coach, with additional study and practice in developmental coaching, somatics, Internal Family Systems, neurodiversity, Liberating Structures, complexity and relational practice. She works with emerging and executive leaders, teams and organizations through coaching, facilitation, strategic advisory and speaking, and advises colleges and universities on institutional strategy and transformation.
She also coaches parents of neurodivergent kids. Cause she gets it - she is one of those.
Creativity remains a central part of her life and practice. A DJ in the early 2000s, she now writes and produces music, writes and tells stories, and designs experiences. Her artistic practice has deepened her interest in emergence: what becomes possible when we create the conditions for something new rather than trying to determine the outcome in advance.
She is the creator of The REALITY Practice, an evolving body of tools and experiences for leading and living well in complexity, and is currently writing Talent on the Table, a book about belonging, human difference and the conditions that allow more of our individual and collective intelligence to become available.
Training and Accreditation
ICF Certified PGCC at Concordia University
IACT ADHD Life Coach
Kaospilot Learning Design and Facilitation, level 2
Internal Family Systems
Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (in Training)
Licensed Lawyer at the Barreau du Quebec
International Coach Federation ACC
Neuro-affirming and trauma sensitive
Build a life,
a team,
a family,
an organization
with intention