I've spent 25 years paying attention to what the workplace does to people. Across 35 countries, in boardrooms and team rooms, in person and online. A lot of it I learned the hard way, inside high-pressure environments, working with leaders who were thriving and leaders who were falling apart, navigating conflict, culture, and the kind of dysfunction that doesn't show up the annual report.
I've held a business together. I've been that leader, depleted and running on fumes. I've led through my own menopause.
Originally from New Zealand, I am based in the UK and often in Spain. A coach, a facilitator, a speaker, a writer and a poet. Pickleball is my happy sport. I play to have fun, then I get competitive. I care a lot about vitality, energy, health, the kind of aliveness that makes good leadership possible in the first place.
Two groups have my heart in particular.
People who run our schools. The heads, the Trust leaders, the ones holding the responsibility of other people's children and who are rarely asked how they're doing. I remember the kind teachers who went beyond the curriculum and really cared about me when i was a child. Working with leaders in education, is one way I give that back.
And women in leadership, especially as they move through the peri-menopause to post-menopause years. The years when many women are at the height of their powers, in workplaces that were never designed with them in mind.
Underneath all of it is one belief. The systems we work in cause much of the suffering we blame on individuals. We tell people to be more resilient when the real problem is structural. I work at both levels, the person and the system. Together, thats where lasting change happens.
“To my extended family and friends - thank you for your love, support and challenge. Your first responses to the poems inspired me to continue to tune in and write down what i heard inside. The African Proverb says - ‘it takes a village to raise a child” well you all helped raise this poet.”