About Malica
I know the double life because I lived it.
Rest leadership coach · Speaker · Author · Health Coach
Malica Ahmad
Thrive-Certified Wellness Coach · Tiny Habits® Practitioner · Certified Rested Path Coach
I made it from the projects to the boardroom. I received the awards, the accolades, the promotions. I worked nights and weekends and wore the achievement like armor. What I didn't tell anyone was that my body was quietly giving out beneath all of it.
Then came the doctor's visit. Close to type 2 diabetes. Thirty pounds overweight. Publicly celebrated. Privately breaking down. I was living the double life — the one so many high-performing Black women know but rarely speak aloud.
Sugar wasn't the root problem. Burnout was the system underneath it. And survival-driven success was what kept it running.
I had spent 25 years as a UX designer and creative leader in tech — a career built on identifying broken systems and redesigning them from the ground up. I knew how to do that work. What I had to learn was how to turn that same clarity on myself.
It took eight years. Not a quick transformation — a real one. Along the way I became a Thrive-Certified Wellness Coach, a Tiny Habits® practitioner, and a Certified Rested Path Coach. I wrote a book. I created a program. And I found that the women who needed this work most looked exactly like me.
High-performing. Faith-rooted. Exhausted. Ready.
The work today
I'm no longer leading with the symptom. I'm leading with the root.
For years, my work centered on sugar freedom — helping women break the cycle of sugar dependency, build better habits, and restore their energy. That work mattered. It still does. But I began to see something deeper.
Sugar was the signal. The real issue was burnout, over-functioning, and using busyness as proof of worth. Women weren't just craving sugar — they were craving relief from survival-driven lives that left no room for rest.
Sugar was the symptom. Burnout is the system. Rest is the redesign.
Now I help high-performing Black women in tech, corporate, creative leadership, and entrepreneurship stop living the double life of public success and private depletion — and rebuild their lives, bodies, and leadership around rest.
The drive that got you out may not be the rhythm that keeps you whole. My work is helping you find the one that does.
The journey
From survival-driven success to restored leadership
25 years
UX designer and creative leader in corporate tech — building systems for everyone else while quietly depleting herself
The wake-up call
Doctor's visit reveals pre-type 2 diabetes and 30 pounds overweight — the moment the double life became undeniable
Eight years
A real health transformation — not overnight, but rooted in faith, rest, tiny habits, and an honest relationship with her body
Today
Author of Rest Is The Way · Certified Rested Path Coach · Yoga Nidra Facilitator · Health Coach · Speaker · RollerFit regular
What I believe
The convictions behind the work
Your body is sacred
Not a problem to solve or a project to optimize. A temple to tend — worthy of rest, nourishment, and grace.
Rest is not a reward
It is a command, a practice, and the foundation your health and leadership are built on — not something you earn after finishing everything.
Faith changes everything
When God is at the center of your health journey — not as an afterthought but as the foundation — transformation becomes sustainable, not striving.
Credentials and affiliations
Expertise you can trust
- Certified Rested Path Coach
- Daring to Rest — Yoga Nidra Facilitator
- Thrive-Certified Wellness Coach
- Tiny Habits® Certified Coach
- Author — Rest Is The Way: A 31-Day Christian Devotional for Faith-Led Health and Sacred Stewardship
- 25+ years in UX design and product leadership in tech
- Faith-centered health strategist — helping women align health with God through rest and stewardship
She practices what she teaches
Sometimes beautifully. Sometimes imperfectly.
Malica lives in Georgia and practices the rhythms she teaches — not as a performance, but as a daily commitment to the wholeness she helps other women find. These days you'll find her at RollerFit twice a week, rediscovering the joy of roller skating after more than twenty years away.
And she's learning — just like the women she serves — that sometimes the most faithful step forward is simply to rest.
Ready to work together?
You don't have to burn out to prove you belong.
Whether through coaching, speaking, or the Rest Is The Way devotional — there's a way in that meets you exactly where you are.