I’ve been in the middle of it too. That’s why you matter to me.
Hello! I am so glad you’re here…
I’ve spent years leading the people’s side of change inside large, complex organizations where transformation is messy, political, and deeply human. I know what it feels like to push a boulder up a hill and wonder why the hill keeps getting steeper. I know what it feels like to be you, the person expected to get everyone pushing in the same direction.
You are often the only person looking at the whole change picture—thinking 10 steps ahead, making sure that what the change team is working on today will get you where you need to be tomorrow. It’s lonely work. And when the change stalls, if you’re like me, you wonder if it’s your failing.
It isn’t. But when I was in your shoes, I couldn’t see that yet.
What I needed then was a champion—someone who deeply understood what it means to lead and deliver change. Someone who could help me reconnect with my strengths, my resilience, and the creative thinking it takes to move an organization forward. Someone who could see what I couldn’t see from inside it.
So here I am today. To champion you, wherever you’re at.
I am passionate about change management work. I am even more passionate about the people who do it.
Project and change managers are among the most capable, committed professionals in any organization. You carry enormous responsibility—often without the authority to match. You translate strategy into reality. You hold the human side of transformation when everyone is focused on the plan.
And you do all of this while absorbing the resistance, the politics, and the weight of everyone else’s uncertainty.
You champion everyone else’s change. I am here to champion you.
How we work together
My work combines coaching, facilitation, change management education, and mentoring. The way we work together depends on what you need. While I firmly believe that YOU are the best source of what will get you or your organization unstuck, I recognize that having a container for finding solutions is helpful, so I designed the MOVE Framework. At the core of the framework are three lenses that all of our work is grounded in. These lenses help you see yourself, your team, or a stuck stakeholder group accurately. Once you see accurately, your options open up and you can make the next right move. That’s the moment we work toward together.
Strengths
What you have, what you bring, and what you don’t see in yourself (or your team) that others already appreciate. We start here, because moving forward is always easier when you use the best of what you have to work with.
Systems
How organizations actually operate: the invisible dynamics, the unspoken politics, the forces nobody names but everyone feels. Understanding the system is often the key that unlocks invisible stuck places, whether that system is around you or around the people you’re trying to move.
Science of change
What’s happening in the brain and body, yours or your team’s, when navigating through change. Knowledge of biologically wired responses to change helps overcome resistance better than any change tool available.
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Background & credentials, résumé style. (In case you’re curious…)
Sarah Updike (that’s me!) is an organizational change management practitioner, coach, facilitator, and trainer with decades of experience leading change inside complex organizational environments in retail, tech, and financial services.
Experience Highlights
-Led enterprise-wide change management for a technology division serving 23,000+ people
-Practiced coaching, consulting, training, and facilitation—the full spectrum of change work
-Deep expertise in heavily regulated industries including financial services, where change is high-stakes and the cost of getting it wrong is real
Credentials & Certifications
– CCMP—Certified Change Management Professional (ACMP)
– ACC—Associate Certified Coach (ICF)
– ITCA—Individual Team Coaching Accreditation (EMCC)
– Prosci Certified—Change Management Practitioner
– EQ-i 2.0 Certified—Emotional Intelligence Assessment
Formal training
– Neuroscience of Coaching
– Navigating Transitions
– Lego Serious Play Methodology—a research-backed facilitation that uses hands-on model building to unlock creative thinking and team alignment
Wherever you’re at, I’d like to help you move.
Want to know more? I write about change, systems, and the people doing the work of making change happen in
Moves from the Middle.