About Me
I am a woman who loves developing people. Looking back, that is the golden thread that connects my whole career- from education to the third sector, through management and leadership to going freelance in 2015. It’s also the link between my specialist work areas; coaching, facilitation, retreat guiding & training.
My work has taken me to four continents, from grassroots village community work to the national management team of a multi-million international charity. I can see gifts from each stage of the journey. Studying English at Jesus College Oxford built my writing and communication skills. Training as a facilitator with ICA:UK and running training for VSO, the Jesuits and Save the Children strengthened my ability to helps groups plan and transform themselves. Completing a Masters in Development at Leeds University broadened my understanding of global development and broader systemic issues for subsequent overseas work. Working in management and leadership roles from 2003-2015 gave me a real range of lived experience of the issues and rewards and balancing acts and pressures facing leaders. Training as a retreat guide increased my ability to be with people and listen generatively, without agenda but with discernment. Qualifying as a coach with CTI and then earning my ICF credential built on this foundation of listening, and highlighted the lifelong journey I had embarked on almost unconsciously years ago, of understanding how humans curtail and limit themselves, as well as what helps them expand and thrive.
All my experience to date confirms the belief that the only real route to lasting and transformational change lies inside the person or the group that seeks to develop. Brilliant leaders, and workplaces, are those that unlock leadership beyond just themselves. So my approach is not to offer pre-packaged solutions, but to work with you to catalyse all the possibilities. Through inquisitiveness, creativity and breadth, I help you determine your priorities, and integrate this to make inspired plans for your future.
Beyond work, I enjoy keeping all five senses learning. I love cycling and swimming, and periodically scare myself with steep climbs and open water. I’m a person of faith, and intrigued by all heartfelt forms of spirituality. I speak a couple of languages well but several more (Tibetan, Wapishana and Portuguese) amusingly badly. I love singing and have recently started working to improve it. I am a slapdash but rapt photographer. I’m fascinated by wine. I cook intuitively, read (lots of fiction, but with an increasingly varied diet of psychology and poetry) far too fast, and don’t have a TV. Like many people who grew up in Belfast, I have little faith in news but massive faith in people.
