Self-sustaining skills, built to last.
Supporting student success by working with their strengths, biology, and environment to develop long-lasting, self-sustaining skills. Coaching builds the executive function scaffolding that closes the gap between intelligence and follow-through, intention and action.
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Where Coaching Helps
Executive function skill-building
Time management, task initiation, prioritization, planning, and working memory strategies — the skills that determine whether smart students actually finish the work.
Diagnosed or suspected ADHD
Coaching does not require a formal diagnosis. Many students arrive with strong suspicions and a long history of EF struggles, and benefit just as much as those who have been formally assessed.
High-IQ and 2e students
Twice-exceptional students often coast on raw ability until the work outpaces it. Coaching helps them build the systems their intelligence has been masking the need for.
02
How I Work With Students
University clients are 18+ standard, teens (16–17) considered by parent agreement.
I support all years of university, not just the first two.
Coaching, not counseling — I am not a substitute for the support you provide on campus.
Sessions are virtual, which works for students who relocate or study abroad.
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Transitions I Support
High school to university
Between universities, programs, or majors
University to first employment
Returning home for breaks, and back to campus
04
Good Fits for Referral
University students (any year) hitting the executive function wall.
High-IQ and 2e students whose grades are slipping despite full effort.
Late-diagnosed students rebuilding their study and life systems from scratch.
Late teens (select, by parent agreement) preparing for the high-school-to-university leap.
"The students who do best are the ones who learn how their brain works while they are still in school. Coaching makes that learning practical."
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What We Work On Together
Time & Task Management
Sensory Processing & Overwhelm
Career & Life Transitions
Emotional Regulation
Medication & Non-Medication Options
Late Diagnosis Processing & Grieving
Executive Function Skills
Rejection Sensitivity & RSD
Financial Management
Relationships & Communication
About Me
I have lived it.
And I have studied it.
Carli Derifield, M.Sc.
ADHD & Executive Function Coach
✉ carli@sanctuum.com
☎ 714.262.6955
◆ www.sanctuum.com
⌂ Newport Beach, CA
I grew up in Ireland, lived across Europe and Australia, and now call Newport Beach, California home. I am a mom of two ADHD teenagers and a wife to a neurotypical husband.
A 25-year career was spent in a highly technical, science-driven corner of healthcare — an industry where decisions are made on validated data, where protocols and regulations exist because lives depend on them. From the outside, it looked like I had figured it out. I hadn't. Behind the success was a woman who was completely exhausted. Masking constantly. Building rigid systems just to survive each day, and 49 years with lived experience of undiagnosed ADHD.
"Working with my ADHD has not made me less successful. It has made me more. I had been following the wrong set of rules, using the wrong playbook."
M.Sc. and successful start-up entrepreneur, 2x successful exits. I hold a Master of Science and advanced professional training from MIT. I am trained as an ADHD coach through the ADD Coach Academy (ADDCA), with PAAC and ICF coaching certification in-process, and a member of the ADHD Coaches Organization.
The training taught me how to evaluate evidence. The lived experience taught me what it feels like to sit where your patients sit: overwhelmed, capable, and wondering why everything has to be so hard.
I created Sanctuum because the support I needed when I needed it did not exist. Something grounded in real science but delivered with warmth, humor, and no judgment. Something that meets people exactly where they are.