My Unconventional Path: From Math Major to Becoming a Certified True Sidereal Astrologer

I have to laugh a little writing this title, because for most of my life, astrology was the last thing I expected to become part of my work.

The Feeling I Could Never Quite Name

Even as a kid, I had this sense of something bigger — a pull toward the sky, the stars, the sheer size of the cosmos, and a quiet certainty that underneath all the world's different religions and belief systems, there had to be one shared thread: love, compassion, respect for one another. I didn't read astrology books as a child. I wasn't "into" any of this in a way I could point to. It was more like a knowing I couldn't explain — the sense that I was somehow from somewhere else entirely (like another star galaxy), while I was getting good grades and doing all the things I was "supposed" to do.

The one thing I always knew clearly about myself was that I was a teacher. In school, I could take a student failing math and get them to an A — not by knowing more than the teacher, but by making complex things approachable. That gift followed me everywhere, long before I had any language for what to do with it. Math was actually my major in high school, and for a while I thought I'd become a math teacher — though I could never quite picture myself as a traditional school teacher.

There was another thread running alongside all of this that I didn't think much of at the time: I've always had a knack for precision. As a kid, I'd be the one who noticed a bill was off by a single penny, welcome or not. I was genuinely good with numbers — really good — even if it wasn't always something I loved doing. Looking back, I think that's part of why Human Design and astrology eventually pulled me in so completely: they're both built on precise calculation underneath the intuitive surface — sixty-four gates, exact constellation sizes and boundaries, everything interconnected by numbers. Teaching something with that kind of underlying structure has always been where I come alive.

It's almost funny to say now, but in college I actually pictured myself becoming a consultant — McKinsey, or something in that world. It never happened. I earned a German Diplom — the rough equivalent of an MBA — in business administration, concentrated in supply chain management and corporate finance, and picked up a Six Sigma Green Belt right after graduating. But I never really got to apply most of what I'd studied. Instead, I found myself in accounting-related roles — good with the numbers, as always, but it never lit me up. In my mid-to-late twenties, astrology wasn't just far from my radar — it wasn't even in the same universe. I was buried in boring Excel sheets, not charts and constellations.

From Corporate to Coaching to Human Design

About ten years ago, I was still in corporate, feeling the walls of it more every year. My interest in coaching and training actually started there, through some exposure to HR — I got a glimpse of how differently every person is wired, and how much gets lost when everyone is asked to fit the same mold of a generic job description. But instead of listening to that pull, I stayed on the finance track, where I had far less contact with actual humans and a lot more contact with my computer screen and long spreadsheets. What I really wanted, underneath it all, was to understand people — their uniqueness, their potential, and the transformation they were capable of. Eventually, I broke away from corporate to build a life around exactly that.

Then Human Design found me, almost seven years ago now. And true to form, I started teaching it almost as quickly as I learned it — a habit some people might raise an eyebrow at, but one I've come to accept is simply how I integrate anything. Teaching is how I learn and I am really good at it.

Within about a year, I'd found my way to Gene Keys, drawn by the same instinct that's always pulled me toward how things connect. Astrology, though, wasn't part of that picture yet. It simply hadn't called to me — until one of my own students brought up sidereal astrology during a mastermind I was co-hosting at the time. That conversation cracked something open.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Being naturally curious, I started asking questions. How is sidereal different from tropical? And, more specifically for me: how would this change a Human Design chart? I already half-knew the answer existed — my original Human Design teacher, Karen Parker, had once mentioned something called Sidereal Human Design. At the time, I had zero interest in it. I didn't even want to understand the astrology behind Human Design at all. Three or four years into my Human Design journey, that changed completely.

What I found was that using the sky as it's actually visible — rather than a fixed tropical reference point — can shift gate activations, type, profile, defined gates, and channels. In other words: it can change the entire chart. And rather than feeling like my Tropical foundation had been wrong, it felt like the next layer of something I'd already built. Human Design had already taught me that the mind isn't here to make our decisions — that's the core teaching of Ra Uru Hu, who channeled the system in January 1987. I'd spent years training myself to feel into what was true in my body rather than reason my way there. And my body had an unmistakable pull toward sidereal, and specifically toward what's known as True Sidereal.

I reached out to Athen Chimenti, the founder of True Sidereal astrology — a system born from his own awakening moment, when he realized that Tropical astrology wasn't actually reflecting the sky as it's visible overhead — and invited him onto my podcast. What followed surprised me: practitioners who'd quietly been working this way for years started reaching out to thank me, because the Human Design community is large, and deeply rooted in Tropical — and a lot of people had been nervous to speak up. I never framed it as one system being right and the other wrong. Just as another lens. What resonates can differ from person to person, and it can shift over time — for me, Tropical was everything for years, until it wasn't.

Building the Bridge

In early 2024, I began one-on-one training with Athen in True Sidereal astrology. I did the coursework, but I never sat the final proficiency exam — not because I didn't want to, but because astrology asked something different of me than Human Design ever had. It needed repetition, slow study, real time. And at that point, my energy was going somewhere else entirely: getting an accurate True Sidereal chart calculator into the world, since what existed still relied on manual adjustments through Genetic Matrix.

I put that intention out clearly, and about a year later, Bodygraph reached out. I'll admit I nearly let that email pass by, since their software only supported Tropical at the time — until I asked if they'd be open to building True Sidereal in. They said yes. What followed was nearly ten months of building, which lined up almost perfectly with Athen finally publishing the official True Sidereal calculations — known as the Midpoint Method — the exact constellation boundaries and values needed to make the tool solid and consistent. By the end of 2025, the calculator was live.

Coming Full Circle

All the while, I kept gently weaving astrology into my own work — reading weekly True Sidereal transit updates, occasionally writing or talking about them on my podcast, learning the houses and signs at my own pace. When Mastering the Zodiac recently opened their official True Sidereal certification, I went back and finished what I'd started, and became one of the first certified True Sidereal astrologers.

This was never about the letters after my name. Chart reading, especially the predictive kind, carries real responsibility — I've seen how badly it can go when someone reads a chart without real training, or leans on scarcity and fear to make a point land. Certification, for me, was about making sure the integrity behind my work matches the trust people place in it.

Human Design will always be where I lead. But you'll be seeing more astrology from me from here forward — because I've watched, again and again, how life-changing this lens can be.

If you're curious about getting trained and eventually certified in True Sidereal astrology yourself, I genuinely recommend this Course by Mastering the Zodiac. As a Certified True Sidereal Astrologer I am happy to share a 50% Discount with you for the course.

And in case you already have a profound background in True Sidereal Astrology, you can go straight to the Certification process plus they offer an optional yearly membership which comes with a lot of perks to help you grow a real professional practice.