(The asterix after each question makes me look for a footnote!)

My primary work: is the invisible spaces!
I build bridges - in knowledge and people. A connector, weaver, listener, relationship builder, systems thinker. I'm (to steal a cute phrase I heard recently) not a know-it-all but a learn-it-all. (More multipotentialite than polymath.) I say this b/c I took psychology, philosophy, environmental science, marketing, law, graphic designer and french at uni 25 years ago. - Systemsthinker before I'd heard the term?!)

I teach yoga. And I work in communications. I love writing, storytelling, workshop co-diesgn and facilitation.
I love putting my energy into activities and spaces that help people reflect, build inner awareness, and explore the invisible - whether unconscious bias, assumptions, judgement etc.

My dayjob is 30hr/wk comms and engagement advisor for a new regional conglomeration of councils, govt and iwi.

For 20 years I've curated, co-designed, published and distributed The Kiwi Diary (www.thekiwidiary.co.nz) a publication designed to "plant good seeds int he gardnes of our minds and hearts." It celebrates kiwi creativity and culture, with a pro-environment and pro-social ethos since 2004. A legit side-hustle!

I also just established www.goodlifecollective.org - a continuation fo kiwi diary, but also to create a space for more experiential learning; a platform to amplify voices that are helpful to a better future. My first speaker event was with Dr Thomas Legrand.

I think I see my role as helping to create events, experiences and platforms for information (in process of building www.goodlifecollective.org) to support people's learning. A connector, weaver, listener, relationship builder, systems thinker. But also healer, definitely. I'm an empath and my yoga teaching has sort of deepened that compassion that others are all doing their best with what they know and have experienced so far.

At work I'm shifting more into curating inspirational thought-leadership webinars (www.wrlc.org.nz), initiating and delivering collaborative workshops (have introduced miro which is a really positive shift and enabling more genuine collaboration) and influencing a more systems-level lense across our work.

I also love bringing inspirational 'aha!' moment - content to people. To open the doors of perception, to shift people's mindsets and heartsets towards that sense of connection and belonging that becomes a place from which benevolence and equinamity are more likely.

I've recently launched www.goodlifecollective.org = and have about 50 amazing thinkers and writers keen to contirbute - both articles, interviews (podcast) and events. Next booked is Dr Steffi Bednerak - which I'm thrilled about.

Also my confidence at work is expanding - catalysed by completing the codesign workshop masterclass with openfield - I've been carving out and cleaving out more space for buidling relationshiops and collaboration at work - and am keen to do more in this space. I'm meeting with peopel in diff departments, identifying those who think like me, and they're keen to collaborate which is wonderful. Slowly building my skillset to be able to effect postiive incremental shifts.
I've changed from my 20s (and 30s!) when I would get overwhelmed with the frustration at the system (espeically after studying environmental science and having my eyes opened to the scale of the issue.)

I've just started an IDG hub - I'm passionate about creating spaces to help people experience that they are ALL leaders, all creatives, all have so much potential - and that so much of it starts with our inner dialogue and mindset. Also to build collective success (we've lived for so long in a society that has incentivised individual success - much to our peril.)

I think my areas of personal growth are related to leadership, in terms of, I'd like to acquire more skills at bringing out the best in others. I need more discipline and clarity in my personal life I think. I tend to spread myself quite thin, balancing my day job, with trying to learn more and more on the side, without necessarily having the space to step back and get a clearer perspective. I'm trying to move with the good energy and the flow, and serve best wherever I show up.

Im also trying to step outside my comfort zone (recently organised a speaker event on my own, with Dr Thomas Legrand - I just feel this intense hunger to bring great thought leadership to hearts and minds - I feel like there are so many incredible poeple out there who are such a balm, they've cracked through past the layer of perception that causes so many to suffer - and I want to bring that collective healing in where I can. B/c - when people have those insights and aha moments, the collective benefits so greatly. It's not dissimilar to my yoga journey. It bought me so much healing that I felt so excited by the idea of being able to gift that to others.

I still feel like I'm in a learning phase of gaining the skills to be able to say with confidence, 'what I do." I'd like to complete more courses related to leadership - such as Brene Browns dare to lead, and practice more workshop codesign and facilitation. I'd like to improve my ability to curate events, workshops, and to be able to confidently curate spaces that support others inner development, and help people to learn how and why to tap into their empathy, and ability to work well as part of the collective (the world has taught us all how to operate as individual.)

I suppose 5 years at university, with a double degree (psychology and french) plus papers in design, philosophy, env.science, law and marketing.
So - time and money there.
I've continuously had 'side hustles' taking a substantial amount of time, on the side of my 9-5 employment - so again a lot of investment of time and creative and emotional energy. For me life has felt like straddling two worlds; the 'current' system in which you need a salary to pay rent etc; and then the 'idealistic' one where my soul can flourish - the harder one! The going against the grain can feel heavy. But, it's that place inside me (mabye that crazy one?) the one that felt like the 'weirdo' - wanting to create beauty, wanting to plug into a better humanity - a kinder, more collaborative, more creative one. I've always loved writing, played piano etc - so that side of me has felt sometimes like aburden. The $5K to gain my YTT (200hr yoga teacher training) was one of the most rewarding things I did.
I've invested in travel so explore the world and build understanding.

I've listed a lot of books!
From my pysc degree:
Dr James Flynn, Aldous Huxley,
I read a lot of autiobiographies in my teens and 20s and really needed that to get over myself! Miles Davis; the agony and the ecstasy; Benjamin Franklin; Nelson Mandela
Yoga (huge amounts of psychology and mindset) - Nico Luce, elena brower, ashley turner
Podcasts! OnBeing, Lewis Howe - School of Greatness; Alain de Botton - school of life;
Deepak Chopra; Power of Now Ekart Tolle, the four agreements
Dr Susan David; Dr Caroline Leaf; Dr Gabor Mate

I also read a lot about great explorers as a young girl which really broadened my thinking about the world, humans, cultures etc:
Ranulph Fiennes; Green City in the Sun,

Esho - human and nature are 2 indivisible entities of the same whole.
My philosophy feels more reinforced as I come across inspirational thought leadres; but really that we are all one, all interconnected; and that we don't belong to ourselves, but to the universe.
And that there is so much greatness and energy that happens beyond what we can measure; but our need to measure - has had a reductionist and isolationist impact on us, affecting our health individually and collectively.
My philosophy is that the more we can allow a flow of living systems, of nature, of what is, and shift to cooperative and collective, away from individual - the better off we will all be 🙂