Services
Does this sound like you?
Career coaching and salary negotiation for first-generation, Black and other underrepresented Bay Area professionals negotiating for the roles they earned, from an Oakland career coach with 12+ years inside HR. Every engagement is fixed-scope and fixed-price, so you know what arrives and when. Start wherever you are: most people begin with the Blueprint and step up if the search needs more pace.
Career Blueprint · $499High-Velocity Campaign · $1,499Executive Concierge · $3,499
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Who this is for
You are a Bay Area professional three to fifteen years in, across tech, healthcare, finance, biotech, the public sector or nonprofit, and often the first in your family to build a career at this level. You got here on merit.
Your background is not a diversity checkbox. It is an edge. You move between worlds without losing yourself in either, and you are used to hearing no and finding another way.
What is in your way is simple: nobody in your family has negotiated at this level, the inherited advice is to take the offer, and the recruiter works for the company. That is the whole career coach vs. recruiter difference: I work for you. That advice kept earlier generations safe. At the level you have reached, it costs you.
You're an urban professional. You work directly with me, a Bay Area career coach, one on one, from the first call to the signed offer.
When to call
The number is on the table and the clock is running. This is the moment the first-offer tax gets decided.
When to call
The title is moving. Whether the pay moves with it depends on what you ask for before you say yes.
When to call
You're not leaving yet, but you know you will. The move after this one is built now.
The cost of staying quiet
$30,000
Black workers in the Bay Area earn about $30,000 a year less than white workers, and the gap persists after controlling for education (Bay Area Council, 2024, using 2021 data).
Your degree and your title will not close it on their own.
Source: Bay Area Council
55%
More than half of workers take the first offer. Of those who negotiate, 78% get a better one.
If you do not ask, you are paying to be polite.
Source: Resume Genius 2025 survey
$269,000
A $10,000 increase on a $120,000 offer, carried through 20 years of 3% raises, is worth about $269,000.
Every raise, bonus and next offer is built on this number.
Generic salary negotiation scripts are written for someone else. Research summarized by Harvard's Program on Negotiation finds that evaluators overestimate how often Black candidates negotiate, and penalize them for it. That is why a salary negotiation coach has to build your approach from your market data and your read of the room, not a template. Read the research →
Same words, different risk
Two people can deliver the same words and face different consequences. Economists at Boston University showed how employers can end up watching Black workers more closely than white workers, so the same mistake gets caught and punished more often, even when the two groups are equally productive (Cavounidis and Lang, NBER, 2015). Their follow-up found the unemployment hazard for Black workers starts out higher and then converges (Cavounidis, Lang and Weinstein, NBER, 2019). Data current as of September 2026.
So the negotiation plan can't only raise the number you ask for. It has to protect how the ask gets read.
01
"You asked for my honest read. Confirming before we meet." Now the record shows you were asked.
02
Name what you're about to do: "Here's the market data," or "These are the team's words, not mine." Framing takes the heat off the messenger.
03
A short recap email: what was asked, what you said, what you proposed. Anyone who punishes you for it is punishing the accuracy.
In their words
If you are a high-level professional looking to make a major career move, McKinley is the absolute best investment you can make. He completely overhauled my resume, transforming my extensive background in Learning & Development and enterprise strategy into a high-impact narrative that instantly resonated with top-tier employers. The results speak for themselves: shortly after working with him, I landed a competitive Associate Director position in late 2022.
Client testimonial, unpaid. Some details changed to protect confidentiality. How results are presented
I had been stuck at Senior Director for three years and kept getting passed over for VP. The Executive Concierge program changed how I framed my strategic value. The positioning scripts and board-prep sessions were the part I did not know I needed. I signed a VP offer with a 35% base increase.
Client testimonial, unpaid. Some details changed to protect confidentiality. How results are presented
The method, measured: 68 applications built to one written standard produced three interview processes and an offer on day 19. In the September sprint, 41 of 41 were confirmed by the employer's own system. Read the case study →
Internal case: the candidate is affiliated with Urban Human Resources. Same method paid clients receive.
Tier 01
$499
Delivered in about two weeks · 1 session
Upgrade credit: move to the High-Velocity Campaign within 30 days and the full $499 comes off the Campaign price.
The foundation: resume writing, a LinkedIn profile rebuild and a job search plan. You leave with materials that pass a recruiter's first pass and a plan that tells you what to do each week rather than "keep applying".
Tier 02 · Most chosen
$1,499
Four to six weeks · 4 weekly sessions
Already have the Blueprint? Within 30 days of buying it, the Campaign is $1,000. Reply to your Blueprint email for the upgrade link.
For a move you want to make this quarter. I run the search alongside you and keep the pace up when the week gets away from you.
Tier 03
$3,499
Three to four months · 8 bi-weekly sessions
Executive career coaching for senior leaders positioning for a board seat, a C-suite role, or an exit worth negotiating carefully. Longer horizon, quieter search.
The outcome
Every tier ends in the same place: you know your number, you have the words, and you know what to do next week.
Run your number
Enter the offer in front of you and the increase you are weighing. The math assumes 3% annual raises over 20 years, each built on the higher base.
Over 20 years, that ask is worth
$268,704
An 8.3% ask today. The High-Velocity Campaign is $1,499, and direct offer negotiation is included.
Book a free consultYour leverage
California employers with 15 or more employees must post the pay range on every job listing, and every employer must give a current employee the range for their own role on request. Most candidates skim past it. Used right, it tells you where you can land before you say a word, which is where any salary negotiation coach should start.
Source: California Labor Code section 432.3. Data current as of September 2026.
Compare
| Included | Blueprint | Campaign | Concierge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resume & LinkedIn rebuild | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1:1 strategy sessions | 1 | 4 weekly | 8 bi-weekly |
| 90-day execution plan | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Negotiation script pack | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Targeted market outreach | No | Yes | Yes |
| Live interview prep | No | Yes | Yes |
| Direct offer negotiation | No | Yes | Yes |
| C-suite positioning | No | No | Yes |
Before you choose
Most people start with the Blueprint. If you need to move this quarter, or the search has already stalled, start with the Campaign: the Blueprint is included in it, so nothing is wasted.
Yes. Move from the Blueprint to the Campaign within 30 days of buying it and the full $499 comes off, so you pay $1,000. Reply to your Blueprint email and I send the upgrade link.
No, and no career coach in the Bay Area honestly can: hiring decisions are not mine to make. What is fixed is the scope: the materials, the sessions, the plan and the salary negotiation support all arrive as written.
Then I say so and send the free resume audit and a reading list instead. The consult costs nothing either way.
For urban organizations
Alongside the individual tiers I run full-scope HR services for urban organizations across nine disciplines: talent acquisition, compensation and pay equity, benefits and leave, employee relations, compliance and policy, global workforce and mobility, leadership development, HR technology, and labor relations and M&A transitions. Scoped to the question, priced before I start.