A food sustainability strategist, climate educator and resilience coach.
Over the last 10 years, I've worked with industry-leading hospitality and retail organisations, ambitious producer start-ups, academics, farmers and NGOs across the food industry spearheading sustainable food operations, collaborating on research and developing global sustainability strategies.
Now, I support trailblazing food businesses in growing and re-forming - positioning themselves as leaders in the fight for a regenerative future of food.
As a climate resilience coach, grief facilitator and educator, I work with climate-concerned individuals navigating the reality of living and working amidst the climate crisis, supporting them in creating meaningful, joyful, resilient lives and businesses for themselves, their people and our planet.
What Brought Me Here
About 10 years ago, I had recently graduated with a degree in Psychology and having spent most of those 3 years vastly more interested in running my small bakery business which led me to then train as a chef, I had finally begun my longed-for career in food, working as a junior development chef for an industry-leading contract caterer. I’d worked hard to crack my way into the industry and was finally doing what I loved - the future felt really exciting.
Soon after, I found out about the extent of the climate crisis.
“Sorry - the planet is basically on fire, the future I’m so excited about is teetering on a knife edge and no one is really doing anything about it?”
For a while, I was distraught and debilitated.
My career didn't feel purposeful enough anymore.
I felt lonely because no one else in my world seemed to know how bad things were...or cared.
I needed to find a way to be positively impactful.
So, I set about figuring out how to still live a joyful, meaningful life in this new context:
I pivoted my career. - Making working towards a sustainable food industry my new mission.I searched for and created community - People who recognised what was happening and were passionate about doing something about it.I got serious about becoming as resilient as possible - So I’d feel prepared to deal with whatever this climate crisis (and life in general) threw at me, and could help others too.
I’ve spent the years since utilising my skills and passion as a chef, learning everything there is to know about sustainable food systems and building communities of brilliant, passionately informed folks from farmers and academics to business leaders and wellbeing professionals all over the world.
On this journey, I kept meeting people who shared the same experience of climate awareness followed by a strong and often lonely sense of "what now?" with not much out there to catch them.
So, I returned to my psychology roots, training as a Climate Reality Leader, Climate Grief Facilitator, Somatic Practitioner and Life Coach.
I’ve navigated career changes, marriage, divorce, loss, moves, redundancy and entrepreneurship whilst holding the knowledge that we’re also in a climate crisis so I deeply know that daily life doesn’t stop just because the planet is in trouble.
We have to be able to hold it all, and that’s a hell of a lot of resilience.
Here’s the most important thing I’ve learned about resilience though:
It isn’t like a bucket.
You have to fill your own bucket, and if you use it more than you fill it, you'll eventually run out.
Resilience is more like a well.
Fed by a deeper source, so you always have enough when you need it.
("but wells can eventually run dry!")
That's when you gather your community together with the right tools and dig deeper until you find more.
You always have more resilience.
(Sometimes, you just need a little help finding it).