Every founder has an origin story. For Deb Davis, hers didn’t follow a typical career trajectory. As an award-winning photographer, Davis spent years making portraits of accomplished women, executives, entrepreneurs, and leaders who, by every outward measure, had it all figured out. But what she observed through her lens revealed something deeper: many of the highest-performing women she met were also the most disconnected from their own voice and direction. She didn’t fold that observation into her photography business or trade one career for the other. She started a second, separate company to address it.
Today, Davis runs two distinct businesses. Detroit City Headshots is her professional photography practice. The Transparency Table is her coaching and education company. Neither was created as an extension of the other, and Davis is deliberate about that distinction, though she’s equally candid that the same themes run underneath both. Confidence, identity, and visibility shape how women present themselves in front of a camera, and they surface again in the coaching room. Davis wears several titles (photographer, speaker, author of The Faces of Transparency: What We Reveal, life and empowerment coach, and breast cancer survivor), but the throughline is a leadership philosophy built on self-honesty as a starting point, not a soft add-on.
“The Transparency Journey helps women move beyond identifying what needs to change and begin doing the work of reclaiming their voice, identity, confidence, and direction,” Davis says.
That philosophy is packaged into The Transparency Table’s flagship offering, The Transparency Journey™, a six-week coaching program with a proven track record. Previous cohorts have already completed the work, and the next group begins in November 2026. The program is built for a specific segment of leaders: the women who are dependable, accomplished, and relied upon by everyone around them, the kind of high-functioning operators who run companies, teams, and households while quietly running on empty. The full framework runs six phases: Reveal, Release, Restore, Rise, Integrate, and Activate, moving participants from recognizing what isn’t working to rebuilding from a place of clarity and then carrying it into daily life.
Davis recently field-tested that message live, taking the stage at the Leadership Experience Tour, where she shared the foundational message driving her work. For a founder heading into another cohort, the appearance signals something CEOs will recognize: demand validated in front of a room rather than in a projection.
From a business standpoint, running two companies side by side is a deliberate structure, not a funnel. Detroit City Headshots operates on its own (including a separate Confidence and Camera Ready workshop that helps clients prepare to be photographed with more ease), while The Transparency Table spans speaking engagements, published work, one-on-one coaching, and the cohort program, with additional groups and community-based learning opportunities in development. Photography clients are not routed into the coaching program, and coaching participants are not expected to book a session. A woman may choose to do both, but that’s her decision, not a designed step. For founders watching, the interesting move is that Davis resisted the obvious temptation to collapse two audiences into one pipeline.
Davis is candid that the audience she is building for isn’t looking for another goal-setting framework. “It focuses on the internal work that often needs to happen before a woman can confidently move toward what is next,” she says of the program, distinguishing it from more transactional coaching products on the market.
For Davis, the differentiator is credibility earned the hard way. Her message about performing strength while quietly disconnecting from oneself isn’t a marketing angle. It’s a pattern she has documented across years of working with high-achieving women, both through her camera and in her coaching practice. That combination of lived experience, diverse touchpoints with her audience, and a repeatable framework is what allows The Transparency Table to scale without losing the authenticity that made it resonate in the first place.
As The Transparency Journey™ heads into its November 2026 cohort, Davis is positioning the program as the continuation of a company built on a simple premise. Leaders can’t lead others honestly until they’ve been honest with themselves.
Learn more about Deb Davis and The Transparency Table at thetransparencytable.com, the Transparency Table Facebook Group, and LinkedIn.
