I am a life coach and mentor with over 16 years of helping and coaching youth and adults develop their potential. I’ve worked both in the advertising, media and education field. One of my passions was working as a sideline in the arts as writer, playwright and filmmaker. My mentoring and life coaching approach is a combination of my media, counselling and arts experiences.
Having studied Theta and Reconnective Healing, I often use my intuition to help clients. This includes intuitive questioning to deal with core issues and responding to higher guidance for added wisdom. This methodology is a combination of a solution based approach and cognitive behavioral therapy. I love helping people by uncovering their strengths, working through their blind spots and using any ensuing wisdom as a stepping stone to deal with their other challenges.
Work History
After studying marketing, design and communication, my college selected me to apprentice with an advertising and marketing company. When I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Monash University, I began work in a media company, Blackmoore AV (now Encore Productions).
The understanding of what a caring mentorship meant was shown to me by two very different types of role models. In Canada, with a Women in View Festival grant, I met UBC lecturer and WIV co-founder Kathleen Weiss. Weiss taught both acting, directing and play writing at the university. An important lesson I learned from her was how to run a workshop giving participants both autonomy and supportive guidance. Later with a NFB grant, I was mentored by film producer Kirk Shaw of Insight Film who showed me the industry ropes. It was with his company that I worked on various Canadian television shows and History Channel documentaries, which was followed by a television award for my second television project, “Madam White Snake and Billy Buckwheat”.
The most formative experience I had was while researching post trauma syndrome for a documentary in which I became interested in how people coped with serious youth and mid-life crises. It was really meeting people like Rick Hansen, Sam Sullivan and common laypeople who somehow overcame all odds to find great meaning in life that moved me. What was profound was not the overcoming experience but their motivation to help others do the same, a tenet that became all encompassing for them.
Education & Formal Training
Eventually, I was led to studies in Counselling Psychology at UBC. From my initial work as a writing teacher and student adviser, I was asked to give college application workshops. This led to my own mentoring work helping two specific groups of youths. The first was students who were not doing well in school due to low self-esteem, typical gaming obsessions or peer issues. The second were the diametrical opposites, teenagers who wanted to be doctors, engineers etc. and who dream’t of an Ivy League college education. This was the beginning of my understanding of our life purpose and the necessary inner child work to allow for that purpose.
It was in studying under corporate coaches, John and Betska Burr, at the Coaching and Leadership Institute that I saw mentoring and coaching taken to a different level. With the combination of logic, creativity and practical client templates, I have seen great outcomes from Power Coaching.
Since then, I have been supported and have supported other holistic health providers in an ever learning journey. My own life experiences in meeting with such a variety of people be it in media or health or with so many individual families have all honed in my desire and skills to helping others holistically and with compassion.
