Lead from Anywhere

A Cohort for Remote & Hybrid Leaders: Build influence whether your team is across the table, across town, or across time zones.

What’s at stake when remote or hybrid work isn’t working?

Imagine six months from now, you're in a leadership meeting explaining why:

  • Retention numbers are down (your best people left quietly when they felt invisible)

  • Projects are delayed (because everything runs through a few Slack channels, and *you* running interference via video calls)

  • New hires take 4 months to onboard and contribute (because documentation is scattered and there’s no system for integrating them into team dynamics through a screen)

  • Cross-functional teams duplicate work (because collaboration breaks down when everyone's spread out and siloed)

  • A critical error happened…again (because the right people weren't in the loop)

And the real gut punch? You saw it coming. You just didn't know how to fix it.

This is an invitation to remote and hybrid leaders who are figuring it out as they go, because the truth is, none of us got handed a playbook for this.

I know it's tough out there. But with the right infrastructure, remote and hybrid models can work and even work to your advantage.

I can help you lead from anywhere.

An Invitation to the Founding Cohort

Inside the Program

A 7-week cohort program combining live instruction, peer learning, and hands-on implementation. Across seven weekly sessions (1.5 hours each), you'll gain diagnostics, frameworks, and practical tools while working alongside senior leaders facing the same distributed leadership challenges.

Each session includes:

  • Live instruction and frameworks – Actionable content to apply immediately

  • Diagnostic assessments – Clear view of where your systems aren’t serving you

  • Practical toolkits – Templates, playbooks, and ready-to-use resources

  • Peer learning – Insights and perspectives from other senior leaders

  • Implementation planning – Structured approach to building your change roadmap

You’ll also get:

  • Office hours – Dedicated time outside sessions to talk through what you're implementing

  • Cohort Slack community – Private Slack group to continue conversations and build lasting professional connections

  • Lifetime access – All recordings, materials, and resources to reference anytime

The goal isn't just learning concepts, it's transforming how your distributed operations work and how your team experiences your culture, even when spread out.

By the end, you'll have a complete 180-day change roadmap with the tools to make it stick.

Course Content

  • Most distributed teams aren't designed for distance, they're running office playbooks through a screen and wondering why it's not working.

    What We’ll Cover:

    This opening session sets the foundation for your transformation.

    • You'll meet your cohort of fellow leaders facing the same challenges, get oriented to the program structure and the Distributed teams framework

    • Begin your diagnostic journey, assessing where your current infrastructure is holding up and where it's breaking down.

    • You'll leave with your first set of tools and a clear picture of the work ahead.

  • How do you maintain the culture that drives retention and performance when your people aren't in the same place?

    What We’ll Cover:

    • Mapping your team's lived cultural experience in your remote or hybrid context

    • Identifying which aspects of belonging, pride, and organizational identity are genuinely felt (not just words on a values poster!)

    • Pinpointing where rebuilding culture with intentionality will have the greatest impact on retention, performance, and cohesion

  • The internal communications paradox: Why is my team drowning in messages but still out of the loop?

    What We’ll Cover:

    • How to audit your communication infrastructure to identify where inefficiencies are costing time and clarity

    • Practical ways to establish operating norms that reduce noise and increase signal

  • We’re talking about collaboration.

    How do you get distributed teams building together instead of in silos, and what's it costing when they don't?

    What We’ll Cover:

    • Identifying where siloed work, tool confusion, and unclear roles, are creating costly rework and delays.

    • What it looks like to establish clear standards for how work gets built together: the right tools, defined ownership, and shared workflows.

  • When critical knowledge and expectations are trapped in people's heads, tensions rise. What is it costing in onboarding time, rework, and your personal bandwidth?

    What We’ll Cover:

    We’ll assess where clarity breaks down in three critical areas:

    • Documentation: where undocumented processes and missing SOPs create tribal knowledge dependency

    • Onboarding: where unclear expectations extend ramp-up time

    • Accountability: where ambiguous ownership creates bottlenecks. Then, build the systems that make knowledge accessible, integration faster, and execution consistent

  • How do you combat invisibility for remote workers and proximity bias for those in the office, before it costs you top talent?

    What We’ll Cover:

    • Identifying where people and contributions go unseen, hurting engagement and retention; from unnoticed work, to uncelebrated wins, to teams in silos, to new hires struggling to feel valued

    • Building recognition systems, celebration rituals, transparency practices, and connection protocols that make people feel genuinely seen, appreciated, and celebrated as part of daily work

  • You didn't come here just to learn, you came here to transform how your distributed team operates. This session is how you make that real.

    What We’ll Cover:

    • Create your 90-180 day implementation roadmap using proven change management principles

    • assess readiness, build buy-in, enable adoption, and establish systems that make transformation for your remote or hybrid organization stick.

Join the Cohort

Who Will Benefit from this Program Most

This cohort is for any leader who has ever thought:

"I wish I could bring back what I loved about our culture before we went remote, but I don't know what that looks like through a screen."

"It feels like we're just a collection of strangers who happen to work for the same company. The friction is palpable and the work is suffering. How do I help people work together when they're spread out?"

"Even though our Slack is noisy, no one's on the same page. I'm worried a critical decision will slip through the cracks, and it'll be my fault for not having systems in place."

"Our best people are quietly disengaging because they feel invisible and burnt out. I worry they're already job searching, but I don't know how to help them feel valued again."

You tend to be someone who:

  • Leads remote, hybrid, or distributed teams at a senior level (C-suite, VP, Director, Department Head)

  • Cares about operational excellence and measurable results

  • Is tired of being the bottleneck for every decision and question

  • Wants to build systems, not just band-aid over symptoms

  • Values practical tools over theoretical frameworks

  • Is committed to implementing, not just learning

Your teams might be experiencing:

  • Culture drift as distributed work fragments your identity

  • Communication chaos despite (or because of) all your tools

  • Collaboration that requires constant intervention

  • Managers who escalate everything to you

  • New hires who take forever to integrate

  • Top talent quietly disengaging

This Program May Not Be the Right Fit If:

  • You don't have the authority or ability to make operational changes

  • You can’t invest 1.5 hours/week for 7 weeks

  • You're looking for individual coaching rather than cohort-based learning

  • You believe your distributed work challenges are unsolvable

  • You're not ready to examine your own leadership practices

  • You're looking for quick fixes without doing the strategic assessment and planning required

Meet Your Facilitator:
Annie Michaels Liao

Annie has been leading remote and hybrid teams for over a decade; since before virtual collaboration was the norm.

She's built distributed work models across vastly different contexts: a beloved global dining brand, an agile tech startup breaking into international markets, and a mission-driven nonprofit. What this taught her: remote and hybrid work doesn't fail because of distance, it fails when organizations try to retrofit old office playbooks onto distributed teams.

Her approach is to build sustainable, future-ready infrastructure designed for how modern teams actually operate (not how they used to,)

Annie has led teams across operations, marketing, training, and organizational development, and coordinated enterprise wide product and technology rollouts. This cross-functional experience gives her a rare advantage: she understands the day-to-day challenges different functions face, which lets her translate between teams, and guide organizations toward solutions that work for everyone.

She's a Prosci Certified Change Practitioner with a focus on GenAI adoption and accordingly, cares deeply about the human side of transformation. Annie is committed to helping organizations navigate the terrain of modern work challenges with empathy, clarity, and strategic foresight.

The Details

Founding Cohort Starts January 2026

As a member of the Lead from Anywhere Founding Cohort, you'll build leadership skills and gain tools tailored to your distributed context, as well as help shape the future of this program.

  • 7 weeks live: Thursdays, 11 AM PT / 2 PM ET (1.5 hr sessions)

  • Program starts January 15 and concludes February 26

  • Capped at 12 participants

Pricing

Earlybird Registration before November 20, 2025: $1597

Founding Registration before January 10, 2026: $1797

Need a payment plan? Happy to work with you!

(This founding cohort is offered at a discounted rate from the future program price.)

Join the Cohort

Have Questions? Let’s Talk.

Choosing a program like this is a real investment of time, money, and energy. I want you to feel confident it's right for you.

If you're wondering:

  • Is this actually relevant to my situation?

  • Will I have time for this?

  • What if I can't attend every session?

  • about requesting accommodations

...or anything else, let's have a conversation.

Feel free to schedule a quick call
(20 minutes, no pressure, no sales pitch, just seeing if this is a good fit)

Schedule a Quick Chat

Or send me a message below with any questions you may have.

FAQs

  • The program is designed for senior leaders (Think C-Suite, VP, Director, Department Head) across any function or industry. If you're leading distributed teams and facing the challenges outlined above, you'll benefit.

  • 1.5 hours per week for live sessions, plus time to review materials and implement in your organization. Plan for 3-4 hours per week total for maximum impact.

  • Yes! Many participants expense this as professional development. I'm happy to provide supporting materials for your L&D, HR, or finance team.

  • All sessions are recorded and you'll have lifetime access to materials. However, the peer learning and live interaction are valuable, so we encourage attending live when possible.

  • Founding Cohort Guarantee: If you're not getting value from the program, you can request a full refund up until the end of Session 3 (the halfway point). No questions asked.