Hello

 I spent my twenties working overseas in organisational development in the private sector, living and working in Costa Rica/Central America, Italy and India. Living in some of these regions gave me a first hand insight into global and individual poverty and eco-sustainability issues. As I turned thirty I made a purpose-driven career shift to make more difference in the world into international development.

 

I loved my job, it was interesting, I worked with great people but I reflect now that I had never learnt how to use the "off button". In 2010, I had a life-changing accident, switching from one minute scuba diving with sharks in Egypt and running leadership development training in Kabul, to a month later finding myself in a wheelchair with numerous breaks, ligament damage and no short-term memory. 

Feeling broken in more ways than one.

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To get my memory going, I realised quite early on that I needed to come off of the pain medication being prescribed. I researched neuroplasticity (a new concept at the time) and drug free pain approaches. It was then that I decided to use myself as almost my own experiment as I discovered mindfulness and its use in pain management.

 

Learning to observe my thoughts, reactions and response to pain, was powerful,

life changing in fact. It helped me build the resilience I needed to test my new health

baselines. I walked up my first mountain two years later.

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​​​​​​​​​​This all created the path I took in in my forties, to train as a psychologist, qualify as a

coach and achieve a personal goal of becoming a yoga teacher. Over the past decade,

I have designed and facilitated new innovative courses to support people in challenging

operating environments overseas and recently in the NHS. The aim is always to help people

to build resilience and well being before the tough stuff happens, and the relationships and personal strategies to lean on when they do. 

 

My academic research has focused on how we experience and can strengthen the act of leading and making decisions under pressure. The resulting resilience training I designed during the pandemic was scaled globally and made available to hundreds of thousands of people. I am so proud that my work has already supported thousands of individuals and teams to face their challenges positively. 

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If I hadn't focused on working with myself during adversity, connecting with my fears, feelings and hope,  I would likely still be on auto-pilot, I would not hold the perspectives or developed the skills that I do now. I used a very trying time to hold up the mirror, to re-design my personal and professional life.  But that's my story ... 

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Let's talk about yours. 

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