I learned to do that by living the first version of it. I was born in the U.S., grew up in Korea, and came back to a third-grade classroom where a teacher pointed out my accent — and a "window" turned out to be a slot in the wall nobody had told me about.
I watched my father, decades of expertise behind him, take work far below his level just to pay the bills. And I realized the gap was never his ability. It was that no one around him could read what he already knew.
Once someone shows you where the slot in the wall is, everything changes.
I spent the next eighteen years learning how to show people. As a career consultant for a global career guidance company, that meant sitting with one person's scattered history and finding the thread that makes a U.S. employer lean in.
Then I started doing the same work inside institutions. I remember sitting in a room with leaders from multiple campuses and departments, all of them working hard, all of them watching students leave and retention slip, and none of them able to say why. They were understaffed and stretched thin, caught between how much they cared about their students and how close they were to burning out. They had a few anecdotes and a lot of effort, but they couldn't see the barriers clearly, which meant they couldn't see a solution, let alone a path to one that worked for everyone.
And I realized it was the same problem as my father's, just at a different scale. The expertise was in the room. What was missing was the reading of it. So I started with the one thing they all shared: their mission. Once everyone agreed on that, regardless of their role, I helped them name common goals while capturing what each campus contributed on its own. From there I connected the dots, pulling from their data, their systems, their documents, and the conversations no one had lined up side by side, until the trends came into focus and it all became one clear story. I gave it back to them in plain language everyone could understand, then led the discussions that turned it into a strategy they could actually act on. They left with more than a solution. They left knowing what to do next, and they got back the sense of purpose that brought them to the work in the first place.
That's what I do, on both sides. I find the pieces that are scattered everywhere, the ones you're too close to see, connect them into a single picture, and build the strategy that moves you toward the goal you actually want.
Dr. Deborah Bogert is the founder of Willow Tree Consulting, LLC and a strategist who helps people and institutions see what they're too close to see for themselves. She holds a PhD in educational psychology with a focus in measurement, along with credentials as a Certified Senior Professional Career Coach and Certified Senior Professional Resume Writer.
Over 18+ years inside universities and mission-driven organizations, including Emory and Penn State, she has done this work from the inside, not as an outside advisor. Leading institutional research across a 23-campus university system, she connected scattered data into a single clear story that drove an 80% funding increase and expanded access for students with significant financial need, built reporting systems that cut cycle time in half, and trained more than 1,000 leaders to communicate the impact of their work.
Today she brings that same skill, finding the pieces, connecting the dots, and turning them into a strategy people can act on, to two groups who need it most: internationally trained professionals whose expertise the U.S. market can't yet read, and the schools and institutions working to understand whether they're truly serving their students.
If you're a professional, we talk through your goals, your history, and where things are getting lost, then decide together whether it's a fit. If you lead an institution, we talk about where you are, where you're trying to go, and whether the work fits the moment you're in. No pressure either way, just a clear look at whether I'm the right person to help you get there.
Let's have that conversation.
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