A Little About Me

I’ve worn many hats over the years, with an eclectic career spanning more than three decades across education, communications, and community building. As a writer, editor, communications advisor and founder, I’ve spent much of my working life helping bring ideas, initiatives and communities into being.

A Lifelong Curiosity

Since my early twenties, I’ve also been on a lifelong quest to discover more about who we are, why we’re here, and how we might better get along with each other. Perhaps this quest was shaped in part, by my own experiences of feeling that I didn’t quite belong, and of navigating many challenging situations and conflict across my personal and professional life.

This curiosity has taken me down many rabbit holes! Along the way I’ve explored spiritual traditions, healing arts, embodied practices and countless opportunities for learning, all of which have been instrumental on my personal healing journey of growth and self-discovery.

My journey has taken me to many places, including six and a half years living in the international community of Auroville, South India, where I arrived quite by “chance” following a pilgrimage to Arunachala. Auroville taught me a great deal about the very real challenges of living and working in community, but it also showed me what becomes possible when people come together with a shared purpose and a meaningful vision.

Along the way I’ve completing a year-long training in Biodynamic massage, a body-based psychotherapy practice, Lomi Lomi massage and bodywork, rooted in Hawaiian healing traditions, and trained as a Steiner Waldorf primary school teacher. I’ve also spent several years participating and learning to facilitate small groups with the heart-centred coaching model, HeartiQ.

Over the past decade, I’ve facilitated hundreds of groups online and participated in many more, exploring what becomes possible when people come together with openness, authenticity and a willingness to meet from the heart.

These experiences have deepened my lifelong interest in creativity, human development, belonging, cultural renewal and the conditions that allow people and communities to blossom.

Writing, Creating & Connecting

I knew I was a writer from the age of fourteen, when I began writing reflections on God, life and the mysteries of being human. Writing became one of my primary ways of making sense of my world, a way of expressing what was alive within me and navigating my existential teenage angst!

Over the years, I've brought my writing and creative gifts to the dreams and aspirations of others, through editorial leadership, publishing, communications, educational programmes and community initiatives.

In 2019, I founded the School of Sophia, an international learning platform dedicated to helping parents and educators support children to thrive. During the pandemic, I created and hosted the Festival of the Child, bringing together more than fifty educators, psychologists, authors and experts in conversation, reaching thousands of people around the world.

Creating the festival was extraordinarily meaningful. The connections, the community that formed and the deep desire to be of loving service lit up my body, mind and soul.

The Birth of JOYAA

The seeds of JOYAA were planted over a decade ago. I knew my life was asking for another direction, even if I didn't quite know what that would look like. It remains an evolutionary process, but one that increasingly reflects the deepest longings of my heart.

Through JOYAA my intention is to create beautiful, nourishing, generative fields of love, where people can reconnect with themselves, one another and their innermost dreams for a life filled with love, meaning and contribution.

I believe we each hold pieces of the puzzle, and that none of us can figure out the next steps alone. Coming together in community creates fields of possibility, the fields of love that I so often speak about.

The joy of Aliveness

What particularly inspires me now, alongside my own writing, is continuing to create beautiful spaces where people can feel seen, heard and felt. Where we can communicate from the heart, deeply listen to one another and feel supported on life’s path.

Whether through online circles, in-person gatherings, or retreats in beautiful places around the world, my intention is to bring people together in ways that nourish connection, aliveness and belonging. I’m particularly drawn to the spirit of Greece and Bali and am exploring possibilities for creating meaningful experiences in these places in the coming year.

I'm the co-author of Dance Yourself Happy: Let Biodanza Light Up Your Life and currently training as a Biodanza facilitator in Italy. A lifelong lover of dance, celebration and bringing people together, Biodanza brings together so many of the themes I've explored over the years. Its capacity to deepen our understanding of ourselves and our relationships through the immediacy of embodied experience is something I find profoundly moving.

A New Chapter

Alongside JOYAA, I’m finally honouring my own dreams as a writer. With seven manuscripts in the wings, writing has become central to my creative life. After many years of bringing other people’s visions into the world, I’m choosing to give my own dreams and aspirations the same love and devotion.

Underlying all of my work is a simple belief: that we are here to love and be loved in equal measure, and that relationship lies at the heart of what helps people, communities and cultures thrive.

This knowing that continues to inform all that I do and my commitment that we are here to Love the World Whole.

I'm now navigating a time of profound transition in this second act of my life. Having experienced more than my fair share of challenge and adversity, it feels like the time has come to create from a deep love of self, others and the world.

This new chapter has already taken me to Italy, Greece and Bali, opening up new friendships, experiences and possibilities.

And I know this is only just the beginning.

Thank you for joining me on this journey.

For those of you curious to know a little more about my professional background, you’re welcome to download my visual CV here.