Let’s have a real conversation.
Here’s the long version.
I used to be very good at being fine.
For seven years, I worked at Facebook.
It was my first job after graduating summa cum laude from the University of Florida with a degree in journalism and marketing in 2017, and the best part was: I fell into it completely by accident.
I started competing in the wild world of collegiate hackathons as a senior, months before graduating, which landed me squarely on a Facebook recruiter’s radar. A wild twist of fate, because I knew nothing about tech and basically thought Facebook was powered by Mark Zuckerberg on a bike in his basement.
I spent my first 3.5 years working as an ad strategist for nonprofits like Doctors Without Borders and CARE, helping hundreds of nonprofit clients learn how to put $5 into ads and get $10 back in donations. In my second half, I led alpha and beta testing on the New Products team, bringing everything I learned in the field back into our advertising products.
I got the highest performance ratings the company gave out, which meant that during every round of layoffs, when I was quietly crossing my fingers to be let go, I never was. I wanted someone else to push me into the unknown. Nobody was going to.
Underneath the good ratings, a life was coming apart.
In 2020, the man I thought I would marry had a sudden mental health crisis, and I spent seven months caregiving in a house with his parents. My skin broke out. My hair fell out. I would sneak into the detached garage to cry so that nobody could hear me, then walk back inside and log onto my 9 to 5 like nothing was happening. One of the darkest moments of that chapter was when my team noticed that my Zoom background was in a different setting, and they all assumed I bought a house. They threw me a digital housewarming party and everything. The only problem was: I did not buy a house… and I didn’t have the words or emotional freedom to explain the heartbreak that was actually going on, so I pretended like I bought a house.
Three months in, the pandemic arrived.
I eventually mustered the courage to leave the relationship, but I was a hollow shell of myself.
I had always been someone who bounced back fast. So I gave myself two months to heal at my parent’s house in south Florida, which is very funny in retrospect, because I had no idea what healing was. I had never done it. I had only ever numbed. Netflix, podcasts, and five to ten men in a dating app queue I had no intention of ever meeting.
Then the last thread snapped.
I’d spent the last year proving out a detailed business case to change how nonprofits were supported at Facebook. Days before Thanksgiving, I found out that my business case was approved by Facebook executives… but I was suddenly “too young” for the role I invented. In other words: I suddenly wasn’t qualified for the work I’d been doing for nearly 4 years.
My work with nonprofits was the one thing holding me together, and in one 30-minute meeting, it was gone.
My life fell apart.
Today, I know that ending was the beginning of everything.
Because The Board Walks did not come out of a strategy deck. It came out of a person who had just learned, the hard way, that you can be surrounded by people and still be starving. I started walking. I invited others. Eight showed up to the first one in July 2022.
The walk was the first thing I ever built that I didn't perform in.
Four months into dating Cam, in July 2024, I quit Meta.
The day I got the keys to our house was the same day I put in my resignation, which is either extremely reckless or extremely correct depending on which of my relatives you ask.
I am so grateful for that company for taking a chance on me as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed new grad right out of school. I also know with total clarity that I was using maybe 15% of what I'm capable of there. The other 85% was just sitting in a drawer.
The day I quit felt like taking off golden handcuffs and running barefoot into a field of sunflowers, going absolutely feral with joy.
A year after that, I stepped down from hosting the walks in Austin, which sounds like a downgrade and was the opposite. I stopped being the woman with the clipboard and became the connection architect: the person whose job is to take this thing around the world, build the systems that hold it, and be the lighthouse so the right people can find it.
We went from two cities to 17+ now, and growing rapidly.
The strangest part is that the walks had no social media presence at all until late 2025. Four years of pure word of mouth and one mysterious weekly tweet, carried almost entirely on my own energy. Now we get 2 or 3 host applications a week from people who found us completely by chance. Someone forwarded them an email. A post crossed their feed on the right morning.
There is no sweeter feeling than building something that no longer needs you to carry it.
Some things that are true about me:
I am a 3/6 emotional manifesting generator in Human Design, which is the technical explanation for why I will say yes to your dinner party with my whole chest and then desperately want to back out two hours before it starts. I don't have access to truth in the present moment. My favorite phrase is, “Let me sleep on this and get back to you.” Learning this dissolved about 15 years of thinking I was flaky and unreliable.
I am engaged to Cam Hogan, who is also my podcast co-host and my Head of Expansion, which means our house is both a home and an operations meeting. He accelerated my entire life by refusing to let me hide.
I pull an oracle card nearly every morning with Cam. Same deck, no drama, just the practice. The magic was never in any single pull. It's in noticing what keeps showing up.
I read Human Design, Gene Keys, Kabbalah, and astrology the way other people read the news. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read this diary.
I was awarded Forbes 30 Under 30 for creating social spaces that fast track real connection and lightbulb moments, which is a very generous way of saying I make people walk until they say something honest.
I do not coach anymore. I got asked to be a coach for years, by lovely people, and every time something in me went quiet. Turns out, I don't really want clients.
I want rooms.
So I build them.
If you want to know what I'm thinking about in real-time, it's all in the Diaries. Wednesday mornings.
Love,
Elle 🤍
Come talk to me about this stuff.
I'm always up for press, podcasts, and partnerships.
Here's some things I enjoy talking about:
Loneliness is a design problem, not a personal failing. You didn't get worse at friendship after 22. We deleted the porch, the corner, and the square, and then acted surprised.
How to build community that doesn't need you. I hosted The Board Walks for three years, then stepped down on purpose. We now get host applications from cities I've never been to, from people I've never met, while I'm asleep. That took systems, not charisma.
Why free was the whole strategy. Everyone assumed we'd eventually put the walk behind a paywall. Four years and 17+ cities later it's still free, and that's exactly why it worked.
What 20,000 people taught us about honesty. The conversation someone most needs to have is usually already fully formed in their head. They're just missing the right person, the right morning, and about three miles.
Leaving the good job. Seven years at Meta, the highest performance ratings they gave, and I spent a year quietly hoping to be laid off so someone else would push me. Nobody did. What happens after you jump anyway.
If any of that is the show you're making, the piece you're writing, or the brand you're building, send me a note.
