About Elizabeth Arnott

I'm a Workplace Strategist and former senior HR leader with more than 26 years of experience in mission-critical, high-conflict workplaces. I've worked across manufacturing, healthcare, higher education, government, and nonprofit organizations — environments where the work matters deeply, the pressure is relentless, and the human cost is too often invisible.

I hold a BA in English from Portland State University and a Master's in Jurisprudence in Labor and Employment Law from Tulane University. That combination — precision with language, rigor with law — shapes everything I do.

Here's what's also true: I am not your typical HR person. I spent 26 years building trust with employees that most people assume HR will never earn. I listened. I showed up. I brought a trauma-informed and psychologically safe lens to decisions, strategy, and policy — even when that made things harder. I have employees who have stayed in touch with me from every organization I've ever worked in. That is not an accident.

But it's not the whole story either.

Even as a Director of HR, I wasn't protected when I had to report my own boss. I went through the retaliation. The disbelief. The performance improvement plan used as a tool to push me out. I sat across from organizational leadership and was pushed aside to protect a toxic leader. I know what it feels like to have your judgment questioned, your reality distorted, and your options feel completely invisible.

When I was living it, I burned personal relationships by becoming a non-stop venting machine. I doubted my work, my qualifications, my own perception of events. I heard "why don't you just leave?" more times than I can count — from people who meant well and had no idea what it actually costs to stay when you have a family, a mortgage, and medical insurance depending on your paycheck.

It was only after I had some distance that I could see clearly what had happened — and what it meant. With 80% of people in the United States reporting toxic work environments, what I had been through wasn't unusual. It was common. It was quiet. And no one was talking about it the way it needed to be talked about.

That's when Unmanaged was born.

The mission of Unmanaged is simple: to bring choice back to the table. If you're stuck in a toxic workplace right now, you may not be able to leave tomorrow — but you are not without options. What I do is help you see those options clearly and use them strategically.

That means learning how to protect yourself while you build your way out. It means unlearning some of the habits that toxic environments create in good people — the self-doubt, the compulsion to do more than you were ever actually asked to do, the belief that enduring is just part of the job. It means developing real critical thinking skills: how to read trends and patterns in your workplace, your industry, and the job market, so you're making decisions based on what's actually happening, not just how you feel in the fog of it.

It also means learning to observe the people around you — their patterns, their behavior, their motivations — and adjusting how you engage with them in ways that work in your favor. Not manipulation. Strategy. There's a difference, and knowing that difference is part of how you get your power back.

You deserve to go to work without dreading it. And if you're not there yet, you deserve a plan.