Mary-Lynne Williams: The Frequency Shift

This conversation is about what it feels like when your work stops matching your frequency and what it takes to build something completely different. Mary-Lynne also shares how AI agents have reshaped her workflow, freeing her to put her energy where it matters most: the humans in front of her.

Mary-Lynne Williams spent 20 years delivering at the highest levels of tech in Microsoft, Meta, Zillow. Product design, systems thinking, leading teams. By every external measure, she was succeeding.

Then she left to found Buffalo Firefly, a sound healing company now operating in Richmond and Brooklyn.

About Mary-Lynne Williams Mary-Lynne Williams is the founder and CEO of Buffalo Firefly, an energy wellness company bringing sound healing and energy medicine to communities in NYC and Richmond, VA. Before founding Buffalo Firefly, she spent over two decades as a product design leader at Microsoft, Meta, and Zillow, working at the intersection of systems thinking, user experience, and human behavior.

Connect with Mary-Lynne: linkedin.com/in/mary-lynne-williams-4a90932 | buffalofirefly.com

About your host Christine Kahn is a Staff Technical Program Manager with 12+ years leading AI platforms and program delivery at Intuit, OpenTable, 20th Century Fox, and Realtor.com; and a musician and soundbath practitioner outside of it.

Connect: linkedin.com/in/christinekahn | christinekmusic.com

© 2026 Dreams and Delivery LLC. All rights reserved.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Dreams of Delivery, a podcast for tech professionals, real stories from people who deliver at work and dream beyond it. I'm your host, Christine Kahn. By day, I'm a staff technical program manager at Big Tech. By night, I'm a musician and a soundback meditation practitioner. I'm here today with Marilyn Williams. Marilyn built a 20-year career in tech in Microsoft, Meta, Zillow. Then she left to found Buffalo Firefly, a sound healing company with locations in Richmond and Brooklyn. Welcome, Marilyn.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Hi.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Today we're going to cover what delivering success feels like when it no longer aligns with your frequency and what it takes to build something completely different. And also why a former product design leader thinks human presence is a thing AI can't touch. So let's get into it. Marilyn, could you tell us your career story from tech to where you are and kind of what influenced that whole pivot?

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Yeah. I can see if I can make the story short because it's a long story, but I spent, as you said, over 20 years doing software development website design for the tech industry. Big places, lots of pressure, lots of stuff going on, lots of excitement, the big growth of like all the way from, you know, dating myself 1996 to when the web really was beginning, starting out websites, getting exciting, watching, you know, some of the players come into place that still exist today, like Bookstore that turned to big. And then also then shifting away from that agency work to come into the software development world in Seattle around 2009. And so then watching everything blow up when iPhone got released and how that shifted everything. And we were all making, you know, progress towards apps on the phone. And it was exciting to have this camera in your hand and moving from Blackberry World into iPhone world, like all of that. I was part of the development of all of that. I was part of creating guidelines for you know in the late 90s for websites. We were the pioneers, there was no education in any of that. And so we it felt cool. And there was so much pressure at the pace that when I started to reflect on it years later, it started to seem weird. Like, why are we like, why are we doing this? And one of the things that really, like, not to make light of it, I became ill. And the level of chronic stress on my nervous system, which I didn't understand at the time, um, how that works. And so the level of chronic stress on my nervous system was creating um openings for chronic illness, both mental and physical, and just having trouble really getting um that under control. And around 2010 or so, I was in Seattle. I kind of got pulled off to Seattle. Microsoft recruited me and I came there, and it felt like looking back, that was such a blessing, even though Seattle wasn't for me. I stayed there for 12 years and I was able to discover lots of wellness that I would have not necessarily discovered in other locations during that time period. So acupuncture, naturopathic medicine, naturopathic medicine in the Washington state is covered by insurance. So you start to be able to experience wellness outside of the Western medicine landscape. And what I had noticed was my levels of stress were getting written off by Western medicine because it wasn't showing up in their blood work. But I had developed a bunch of underrecognized chronic conditions like Lyme disease that were not being treated by Western medicine. And so I started to just seek out ways to feel well since they couldn't make me feel well. And that took me to a shaman, acupuncture, naturopathic, Reiki, sound healing. And it built over time meditation. I did meditation training, um started to meditate on my own, didn't feel like I was doing it very well at first, but that's actually how it starts. I now know to when I teach my students, they're giving me the same the same thoughts. This is hard. So I I built up a level of skills over time, and then I looked back and realized that everything that I was going through on a day-to-day basis was putting me into a chronic condition that was not going to be recoverable if I continued the way I was.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

What do you say? That was the main catalyst in what made you shift to go try something completely different.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Yeah, I was able to have ups and downs with the health, even without leaving, retiring. And I still had continuous stress piling up. And so, you know, I guess it was 2019, I went to a retreat for women in design leadership run by Mia, uh, Mia Bloom of design department, and it was in Palm Springs. And I learned at that moment in time something that I ironically didn't know before, which was that there were other women like me in leadership positions. And they were just peppered around all the tech companies. So I was a design director at Microsoft and then at Facebook, and then I was at Zillow at that moment, and I was often the only woman in the room. And I went to this retreat and I met your sister, who was at Airbnb at the time. I don't know if she's still there, but we all kind of connected on this fact that we were in this isolated role away from each other, but that we were so happy to have found each other so that we could know that we were not alone. We spent a few days at this retreat in Palm Springs. I met a Reiki master who was there as part of the retreat, and she was doing group Reiki, and I was just like, Oh, I need to know you. And she was from Seattle. Oh wow. So I came back, I did Reiki training, and then nothing was the same.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

We have um, I have one of the crystals I bought from Buffalo Firefly. Oh my god. I don't know if it'll show on a video.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Oh my god, yes. What happened after the Reiki happened was that I started going to sound outs, I started doing Reiki on myself, I did some Reiki energy work. It's a it's a Japanese healing art, and I started offering this to some friends, and I started realizing how powerful it is for relaxation, for healing the nervous system and healing the spirit. And I came back to work after this Palm Springs retreat, and I remember having a conversation with one of my coworkers, and he's like, How you know, how was it? You're back, and I was like, It's it feels surreal walking into this building. I don't know where I am. I don't feel like I'm in this like dream state, and it's not a great dream. And it felt to me suddenly like nothing was none of this was right. I wasn't supposed to be doing it, and it became clear over the next couple of months, and then I left. And that's when I started Buffalo Firefly.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Very cool story. Just I I think a lot of people can probably relate to that feeling of is there more to this? Am I supposed to be doing something that's more aligned with my frequency and what's healthy for me? I'm sure when you started there were fears that came up. If if you don't mind sharing, you know, how how did you manage that that feeling and maybe reactions from other people?

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Oh gosh, so many things. Some people were really excited about the change. They were excited about what the potential was, but I didn't even know what it was yet. And so I made a joke to my Zillow team who didn't want me to leave, and I said I was gonna buy a like a food truck type thing and go around to all the tech campuses and read tarot cards for people and call it like a tarot truck or something. And they thought that was hilarious and great. But basically, what I did was for a month I did yoga every day and just thought about what I was gonna do. My biggest fear was that I was gonna end up back there and that whatever I was gonna do was not gonna be enough income to sustain over time. And so I started this in around September 2019, and I decided at that time just to take what I had and build something with that, which was I had leadership experience, and I was always coaching my team members, and so I started with the idea of coaching, but kind of with a witchy twist, a little tarot cards in the beginning of a session to really get to the meat of a problem. And then I started offering Reiki for like real discount rates, and I eventually started charging what that's worth, but I started to also host uh workshops in my home in Seattle, like energy workshops for people who were struggling at work in the same way that I was struggling. So I started to basically say, I have experienced this, I can help you with this because this is how I came through it. And then COVID hit and all that in-person stuff was no longer, and so I started to diversify, which is why you have a crystal there. Crystals became um like a real place of intrigue for me. It's what runs all of these tech companies, right? Like quartz is the foundation of our computers, it's the only reason that they're there, it's they're really powerful. And I think a lot of people who don't understand that or haven't experienced it may roll their eyes at that. And that's the sort of thing that, you know, I was getting. Like I could feel the looks from certain people in my life. But what I realized at a certain point was that it didn't matter what people that I had in my present at that time thought because I was building into some new version of myself. And the new version of myself is aligned with other people at another frequency. Some of that is because of the Reiki and the ability to take that energy work, get myself into a meditative state and reflect on my emotions, my thoughts, and understanding why I think a certain way and why I react a certain way. I kind of got out of victim mentality and into my power.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

Now, one thing that I heard recently was usually when you're looking for people, they're also looking to find you. And it's so important to become visible. And sure, you may repel certain personalities, but you will also attract the right ones to find your business to find you. I'm curious, you know, given your background in design thinking, systems thinking, how did that help you in setting up your business?

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Well, I think that it's really interesting because as a systems thinker and UX designer and product design leader, I was it was my job to be systematic. It was my job to make sure that we were doing things in a way that was sustainable and repeatable. And when you're running a business as an entrepreneur, like or a solopreneur, which was part of my time, you're making fast moves, quick steps, organic growth. And I think one of the things was I had to realize that actually that's part of what was making me sick in the first place was that deep stress about the system. Like it has to be perfect, it has to be perfect. Because that's kind of what we were trained to deal with in the tech industry. But then what I ended up doing was building like also something I learned from tech, which was the MVP, the minimum viable product. And if the thing worked, I got it out. If the post was good enough, I got it out. If my writing on my website was good enough to get the message across, I launched it. I was, I tried not to make it about that, but I also looking back right now, which I'm doing a lot of because I'm actually working with Claude with AI to help me with a lot of these systems. I'm looking back and I see I actually created a system without really knowing it. I was trying to be quick and easy. I didn't care about the margins or if the font size was wrong, but ultimately I really did make a system that was mostly consistent.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

I was curious of how AI has come into play in your day-to-day for running this business, given it's grounded in human presence, which could look like a conflict in how AI is designed or perhaps complementary. You tell me.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

Mostly because we're just working so fast. We just type up something and go. And also because I didn't really trust the writing, for instance. I did use, um, I have definitely like well over 400 products on my website. And I write the descriptions with AI because it's just untenable for us to write everything from our hearts by hand for each of these products. So we we do a lot of that content creation that's less important for us. However, when Claude came out with Claude Co-work and when I started to become more aware of Claude's capabilities, I did start working with Claude. And the reason that I am advocating for that when I also advocate for human presence is that I can't be present as an entrepreneur if I'm always in the weeds. And I've created tools since the middle of April. I've been using Claude. I signed up for a training. I have two of my employees in the training as well. And we're learning all kinds of amazing skills to use Claude to get stuff off of our plates that does not need to be there so that we can be present. If I can't, if I'm spending all my time updating financial stuff in a spreadsheet, trying to figure out what I owe vendors, things like that, I'm not doing sound baths, I'm not helping people. And if if I'm I basically have all of these agents running that know my business because I built them and it's all in my head and it's running, we have things running every night, taking care of our payouts to our Sound Bath facilitators. It just goes into our system, calculates it, sends me a text, and then I send the Venmo.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

I don't have to pay somebody to do that. I can pay my team to do things that are around wellness.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

That's awesome. I love that you found the balance between kind of treating AI as an assistant that can enable you to have more time to do the strategic and leadership pieces of your business. So you've got two locations. Oh, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Yeah, I want to add something about the AI human thing. I think a lot of people are worried about human connection and AI. And I think that we have the same problem as we always had with anything. People have to make choices. Humans have to make choices about human connection. If someone spends more time talking to their AI assistant and using that as a way to avoid isolation, then that's a choice that they're making to isolate from humanity. And I think that we just have to continue to stay on top of that. You're making a choice to scroll through social media. Yes, those platforms are addictive. They make it really easy, but we still have to be present with what it's doing to our own behaviors. And so I don't think this is any different than any other time in history when something new comes out that can take your attention away from your family, your friends, your loved ones, your um ability to connect with other humans.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

That's so true. Even before AI, we had iPhone limits like screen time to help us stay focused. And I know there are apps too where it'll lock your phone and you know you're not able to access it, say, for an hour. So you're really gonna complete a task.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

So yeah, they should marry their AI assistant.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

That's gonna be like I think it's probably I think it's happened though.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

It has happened, it has happened, and also bless their hearts. Like if that makes them happy. I'm I'm happy for people to be happy.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

Right. Whatever works for you, but it's a choice, like you said.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

As a business owner, running this business from scratch with no business experience at this level, like creating uh brick and more brick and mortars, which we can talk about, but brick and mortars and online presence and a retail business, e-commerce. I have no guidance. And when sometimes I AI is my only friend, it's like my business friend. And I can get real like sanity checks from Claude, and I can also make sure that I'm getting the right information. You always just have to make sure that you're getting the right information, but sometimes I get pulled off of the ledge by Claude because I'm planning a thing this weekend, an open studio, and I was like, I was just basically spitting out about it because I was creating too much in the plan, and Claude brought me back. Wow. That's not something I can't pay for um an operations partner. I I'm currently running this with a few really scrappy people, and until I can grow the business, you know, to multi-millions where we can actually have kind of operations people that can be my sanity check, I have to really make the best of my tools that I have at hand.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Yeah, and and I could also see you training that operator to have the persona that fits still within your business vision and the tone that you want. I've I've seen articles where people train their AI to kind of be their board of directors and like, all right, you're going to be the financial person, you're going to be the operations person, and you go do this. So it's removing that barrier to entry to someone who wants to just start their own thing and do that MVP, like you were saying, to see is there even a market fit for this? Is this something people will pay for and really get empowered to design something completely of their own, which is so exciting?

SPEAKER_01 18:46

AI is gonna misguide you if it doesn't know you. And that's part of this big training that I'm doing uh with a company called the Uncommon Business. And I am creating Claude, a context for Claude to understand me and how my voice works. When I do a podcast like this, the whole transcript goes into Claude. So Claude knows me. Claude has more information about me than the average Chat GPT session would ever have, right? And that's what makes it literally save lives. Like I just I need it right now to run the business, and I'm really enjoying working with it.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Was there anything really surprising for you when you were building in this space?

SPEAKER_01 19:30

Yeah, I think the thing coming out of that perfectionist mindset that surprised me was that I didn't have to have it all figured out to start something. I started with something that is almost completely different than it is today. And I you just sort of trust to keep taking the next step, to keep building, to keep shifting, to keep learning. And so you don't have to have the most laid out business plan to start something like this. So that really surprised me that even that because I didn't have a full vision figured out that I was able to keep this business running for almost seven years now. Incredible. Yeah, so you really it is just take a little seed of something, build on it, and grow it over time. When I named the business Buffalo Firefly, people were like, I was trying to name it, and I'm like, why don't you just use your name? Because that's what a lot of coaches or individual massage practitioners or Reiki practitioners do. And I was like, no, I think it needs to be on a building one day. I had no idea where the building was going to be, but I I did it. I manifested it on a building. So it was really cool. But yeah, that was what surprised me. And I want people to hear that if you're feeling this kind of, you know, the fear of layoffs or just the burnout in tech or the burnout in your regular whatever your job is, whether it's in tech or not, it's okay to not know the full future. Just take the next step, stay present in the moment that you're in, and then you'll be set.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

Yeah, it starts with a dream, right? And then you just move step by step to get there. And you've done it. Congratulations. Hopefully, someday I get to see your physical office in person. We've only done the virtual Akashic readings and Reiki. But yeah, really lovely having you. Thanks again, Marilyn. To everyone listening, if this resonated, subscribe and share it with someone who needs it. I'm Christine Kahn. And this is Dreams and Delivery.