ABOUT SASHA N. FRANKLYN
She didn't study
this pattern.
She lived it.
Career Decision Strategist · Founder, Nurimas Coaching · Korean-Trinidadian-American
THE STORY BEHIND THE WORK
Where this came from
Sasha N. Franklyn grew up in the in-between: Korean and Trinidadian, American by location, first-generation by inheritance. The particular pressure of carrying the definitions of success, honor, and responsibility from multiple cultures into every room she entered was not something she could explain at the time. It was just the texture of decision-making.
She built a career in a prestigious field. She earned the credentials. She did what was responsible, what honored the sacrifice behind her, what made the people who had invested in her future proud. And she spent years in the particular bind of someone who has done everything right and is only now beginning to suspect that "right" was someone else's definition.
The Double Failure Trap™ is the name she gave to that bind after she had been inside it long enough to see its structure clearly. It is not a metaphor. It is a precise description of a specific psychological architecture, one built from love and collective obligation, one that operates invisibly until it is named, and one that will not yield to tools that don't see it.
The methodology came from moving through it herself. Not from studying the phenomenon in others but from living it, naming it, and then watching the same structure operate in every client she worked with, across different cultural backgrounds, different career stages, different specific pressures, the same fundamental loop.
Sasha N. Franklyn
Professional Background
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ICF-Accredited Certified Life Coach
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Master NLP practitioner
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Training in Positive Intelligence® Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, narrative identity work, and cross-cultural psychology.
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1200+ coaching hours supporting first-generation and diverse high-achieving professionals.
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Former BigLaw attorney (M&A).
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1M+ learners reached globally through education partnerships.
More important than credentials, I understand the in-between — the space where kinship, ambition, dignity, and belonging collide.
The credential proved something real. The both/and was always available. The loop was always intelligent. What changes is who is holding it.
TRAINING & CREDENTIALS
The methodology and its foundations
FRAMEWORK
Double Failure Trap™: proprietary framework developed from direct lived experience and refined through client work across first-generation and multicultural professionals.
POSITIVE INTELLIGENCE®
Certified Positive Intelligence® Coach. PQ Saboteur Assessment integrated as a precision diagnostic at the entry point of every container.
MODALITIES
Parts Work (IFS-informed). Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). Values Clarification. Career Direction & Decision Architecture. Ohaeng-informed identity work.
HOW SASHA WORKS
What makes this different
01 Work at the structural level
Many professionals arrive after years of thoughtful effort: goal setting, planning, accountability, and strategic career moves. Yet the same decision tension continues to reappear.
Our work examines the underlying structure that shapes that tension. Together, we identify the belief organizing the loop, how it formed within your cultural and family context, and how it continues to guide decisions today. Seeing the structure clearly creates space for choice where there previously felt like pressure.
02 Cultural precision
The DFT™ framework was developed within first-generation and multicultural experiences. Cultural value systems shape responsibility, success, loyalty, and obligation in distinct ways.
For example, Korean Confucian duty, Caribbean immigrant sacrifice, South Asian prestige pressure, and West African family honor each carry their own internal logic. Our work approaches these inheritances with that level of specificity so the pattern can be understood in its actual context.
03 Expansion without departure
The Double Failure Trap™ develops through intelligence, care, and loyalty. Those qualities remain central to the work.
The process examines the inherited value system with care and precision, allowing you to see which parts feel deeply yours and how you want them to live in your life going forward.
Clients often experience a noticeable expansion in internal capacity: steadier decision-making, deeper self-trust, and greater emotional stability while remaining connected to what matters in family and culture.
04 Clarity that holds under pressure
Our work is methodical and reflective. Through the process, clients develop a clear articulation of the direction they are choosing to move toward and the values supporting that choice.
That clarity is captured in a written direction statement. The document serves as a durable reference point that reflects the insight, stability, and self-trust developed through the work, allowing you to return to it whenever new pressures or major decisions arise.
WHO SASHA WORKS WITH
The population this work is built for
Sasha works with high-achieving professionals across the diaspora, including Korean, East Asian, Caribbean, South Asian, West African, Latin American, and East African backgrounds, along with individuals who carry these cultural value systems even when immigration occurred in earlier generations.
Diasporic professionals often hold multiple systems of meaning at once: family responsibility, cultural inheritance, and professional ambition. These forces shape how decisions are weighed, how success is interpreted, and how obligation is carried. The Double Failure Trap™ frequently emerges within this landscape, where each path can appear to carry a meaningful cost.
Clients are typically mid- to senior-level professionals in high-credential fields such as law, medicine, finance, consulting, engineering, academia, and corporate strategy. Their careers already demonstrate capability, discipline, and achievement.
Alongside that success, many experience an internal tension around direction, responsibility, and identity. The work provides a structured space to examine those pressures with care and precision. Through that process, clients develop greater internal steadiness, deeper self-trust, and clarity about the direction they are choosing to build.
Sasha works with professionals across the diaspora because this is where the both/and becomes most necessary and most difficult to access within conventional career guidance.
CURIOSITY BECOMES YOU
The thinking behind the work, in writing
Sasha writes about career pressure, inherited expectation, cultural identity, and what it means to build a life that is genuinely yours.
Her essays appear in the Insights section of this site and on Substack, where she explores the cultural and psychological patterns that shape how high-achieving professionals across the diaspora make decisions about work, family, and identity.
The writing offers a public window into the ideas behind the framework and the kinds of questions explored in the work.
If you want to understand the thinking behind the practice, the essays are a good place to begin.