CISOs  ·  AI Leaders  ·  Founders  ·  Technology Executives

The
Permission
Problem

Every senior leader eventually reaches decisions they can’t fully delegate, disclose, or delay.

A confidential thought partner for the decisions that reach past the office.

Who You Work With

I work with CISOs, technology executives, AI leaders, and founders making decisions where the consequences are personal: board accountability, legal exposure, investor pressure, reputational risk, team conflict, and career-defining tradeoffs.

The executive everyone else calls when the stakes are real.

Judgment, Not Just Strategy

Most advisors focus on strategy.
I focus on judgment.
Strategy follows judgment.

I see the patterns and name them. Once they’re visible, leaders can change them.

Under Pressure

Under pressure, leaders often mistake urgency for importance. They begin solving the wrong problem because no one stopped to examine the original question.

Judgment isn’t about having more information.
It’s about seeing what matters.

Erin Haertling seated on a white bench beneath a shaded portico, smiling with one hand resting under her chin.

What I Do

I help CISOs, AI leaders, founders, and technology executives
think more clearly when pressure threatens judgment.

The work starts where a decision can't be delegated and the answer isn't obvious — and there's rarely anyone in the room who can talk it through without an agenda of their own.

The Questions

The questions I work with don't have clean answers.
They have consequences.

Do I take the role?
Do I resign?
Do I disclose the risk?
Do I challenge the board?
What does this decision cost me — beyond the organization?
What am I not seeing?
What would I decide if no one was watching?

Most advisory relationships aren't built for these conversations. They're the ones leaders carry alone.

The Layer Most Advisors Miss

What happens to judgment
when the consequences
become personal?

Senior executives under sustained pressure struggle to see the patterns shaping their own decisions, because proximity makes patterns invisible. I see and name these patterns; once named, patterns can be changed. Those patterns rarely stay in one room: what looks like separate problems is often the same pattern showing up wherever the stakes are high.

Technical and strategic advisors are necessary. They don't always reach the human experience of carrying that responsibility when the risk is personal and hard to reverse.

Judgment erosion. Miscalibrated risk tolerance. Second-guessing after the high-stakes calls. The courage it takes to decide when the rules haven't been written yet. I work at this layer.

Most advisory work stops at strategy. Most support stops at behavior. The work I do sits underneath both, where authority and real risk meet.

In Practice

One executive recognized that the same over-flexibility showing up outside work was also weakening boundaries at work — the same instinct, running unseen in both places. Once named, they could pull the two apart and set the right level in each.

Two founders kept clashing over transparency. Both held the value; they'd just defined it differently and never compared definitions. What felt like a philosophical rift turned out to be an operational one — which made it something they could fix.

"She gave me the confidence to trust my own intuition — something 20 years in this industry hadn't done on its own. The decisions got faster. The second-guessing got quieter." — Fortune 250 C-Suite Executive, identity withheld by request

What Changes

The Foundation

The executives I work with have no shortage of conviction. They are often decisive for everyone around them while withholding the same permission from themselves. Under sustained pressure, perspective narrows and the patterns get harder to see — even for the most capable. My work restores that perspective and helps them move from performing authority to executing from it, before the patterns turn costly. The result is cleaner decisions, and less hesitation on the calls where delay carries a real cost.

Patterns Named

Hidden decision patterns become visible — while there's still room to change them.

Faster Decisions

Clearer under ambiguity, with less second-guessing after the hard calls. The hesitation that comes from unexamined patterns gives way to grounded confidence.

Agency Restored

They stop reacting to pressure and start deciding from intention — finally extending themselves the permission they give everyone else.

Boardroom Presence

Executives who understand their own pressure patterns hold their position with greater authority under scrutiny.

Less Weight After Hard Calls

The second-guessing that trails high-stakes decisions gets quieter. You carry less from one call into the next.

AI Risk  ·  The Human Layer

The anxiety is real.
Most leaders carrying it won't say so out loud.

The fear isn't only yours; it lives inside the organization too. Left unaddressed, fear becomes drag. Adoption stalls, trust frays, and the weight lands back on the executive already carrying the most. People file it under technology. It's a leadership problem, and it sits squarely in the human risk layer where I work.

The questions are new, and the answers aren't written yet. Technical AI advisors handle the tools, the models, the governance. What they don't touch is the human experience of leading through it — what sustained ambiguity does to discernment, and how you decide clearly while the rules are still being drafted. I work in this gap.

Erin K. Haertling

Erin Haertling leaning against a white wall, smiling, with greenery behind her.

Not as an observer — but from years inside high-pressure, high-consequence environments.

As a former United States Air Force officer who held a U.S. Top Secret clearance, with service at Headquarters, United States Air Force Academy and Air Force Space Command, I know what sustained pressure does to a decision. I've worked alongside senior military leadership in environments where a miscalculation is mission failure.

What came after built on it: graduate clinical training and clinical practice. Across a 25-year career that began in the military, the constant has been high-stakes environments — and how people hold up and decide inside them. I work where the technical pressures and the human ones meet — most advisors sit on one side of that line. The combination is rare, and it's usually why a certain kind of leader ends up across the table from me.

High-Consequence Environments

Former U.S. Air Force Officer  ·  Held U.S. Top Secret Clearance  ·  Air Force Academy & Air Force Space Command  ·  Space and defense systems

Human Judgment Under Pressure

Registered Clinical Counsellor  ·  Canadian Certified Counsellor  ·  Master’s in Counselling Psychology, Adler University  ·  ICF Associate Certified Coach (ACC)  ·  Brown University School of Professional Studies Coaching Certification  ·  Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach

Technical Fluency

B.A. Computer Science with a Focus in Statistics — Smith College  ·  MBA in progress, University of Arizona

"Looking at risk clearly, and sitting with it, takes courage. In this environment that isn't a soft skill — it's one of the hardest things a leader does."

Ways to Work Together

In practice, it's a confidential room where the decision in front of you gets thought through and pressure-tested before you commit to it.

For the decision in front of you A single confidential conversation, when the answer isn't obvious and you need a clear outside mind before it becomes expensive.

For the pressure that doesn't let up An ongoing thought partnership through sustained board pressure, a high-stakes transition, or AI and cyber decisions where the frameworks are still forming — over time, and in confidence.

The right conversation
starts here.

If you're carrying a decision that cannot be delegated, let's connect.

I work selectively and in confidence. Every conversation is private from the first email. Confidentiality is part of the work — most client relationships remain private by design. My clients don’t appear anywhere on this site.

One email, straight to me. No intake funnel. If it's a fit, we'll know quickly.

Begin the Conversation

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