What makes me feel alive

I feel most alive in my work when I’m supporting a brave leader to reclaim their authentic creative power (aligning their values, vision, and well-being).

I love experimenting with bringing new paradigms and ways of being to life and finding the unlikely connections between people, ideas, or concepts.

I’m inspired by taking cues from art, ecology, the natural world, or imaginal worlds as alternative lenses to encouraging growth and change within leadership or organizations. 

I’ve been based in New York City for the last six years, and I thrive on creative energy, intellectual curiosity and the arts, cultures, and variety. I feel grateful to have a rich community of fellow heart led dreamers/thinkers, and enjoy time in nature, playing with art, homemade dance parties, cuddling my dog, and a regular dose of live music. (Enneagram 7w8, Manifesting Generator, ENFP, Pisces sun, Taurus Moon, Scorpio Rising).

Who and what has influenced my work:

Certifications:

Trainings:

  • Illuminate Work: Completed one year cohort of women building alignment between values and work

  • Coaching with Kerri Van Kirk - Completed private coaching: helps creatives & entrepreneurs leave behind their ordinary and truly thrive in life, art & business.

  • Center for Wild Spirituality Completed their intensive eco- spirituality leadership cohort

  • Starting Bloc - Completed their Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship Cohort in NYC

Professional Work Experience:

  • Leadership Coach and organizational development consultant

  • international aid/ development worker & philanthropic Consultant. Lived and worked from Ethiopia, Namibia and Burundi working on rural health networks, USAID HIV/AIDs programming, Neglected Tropical Disease research and national advocacy. Manager of Anti-Human Trafficking program, pioneering first pooled private multi-million dollar fund to fight modern slavery.

  • Co-Founder of a social justice arts network with 80 global artists and visual exhibitions

  • First employee for global eye health coalition based in NYC.

  • Director of first New York citywide mentorship program for Center for Social Innovation, home to 350 social entrepreneurs.

Why I do this work:

Growing up, my mum was a psychologist and my dad was an organizational change management expert. So of course, I can’t but help believe in our human capacity for transformation and collectively improving our world! But I also know that we’re not meant to do it alone, & don’t need to sacrifice our well-being to bring positive change. (Trust me, I learned this the hard way from multiple burnouts!)

I grew up in England and at the age of 18 I moved to the US to study International Politics. After graduating, I followed in my parents’ footsteps, working in international development and philanthropic consulting for over six years across Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Three of those years, I was based in Ethiopia, Burundi, and Namibia as sole representative coordinating Government, aid agencies, international and local nonprofits. I worked on a range of issues including health care systems, education, anti-human trafficking, and emergency relief responses such as the Ebola Crisis.

In 2016, I moved to NYC, feeling burned out from the years of travel and working on emotionally complex realities that often led to pushing past my body’s limits. I hoped my new role working as a first employee for a social enterprise with two co-founders would provide a more rooted life. After eight months I quit, due to an unhealthy culture that led to panic attacks. I felt I had completely lost my sense of self, my confidence, my voice; I didn’t know who I was without being defined by my work or job.

After healing through coaching, therapy and a beautiful community of friends, I regained my sense of agency, inner safety, and self-worth for who I was. I was able to hold more nuance, peace and compassion.

This inspired me to build my own consultancy, to support healthy organizational cultures, expand visions, strategies, structures, and innovative approaches that didn’t lead to burnout. During this time, I also spent two years co-founding a diverse global network of 80+ social justice artists and curated three exhibitions across the US. Weaving together my first love of the arts, and passion for social justice was an eye opening and exciting ride.

However, the deeper I got into working with leaders and entrepreneurs, the more I saw how their internal sense of being overwhelmed with stress and fear, as a barrier to success. It finally clicked: everything is connected, and every part of us matters. Business is personal.

This is when I first realized the power of coaching alongside consulting, to expand the definition of growth beyond a business or organization, to include your own humanity! And to invest in your own growth is essential as it will naturally impact everything else.

I now support leaders, creatives & entrepreneurs to be rooted in their own wellspring of nourishments so that they can be filled up, and joyously overflow into their creations, communities, and others they reach. I hope to contribute to a groundswell of leaders and creators, that expand into their greatest potential, creating a new way of leading and being in the world.