A food sustainability strategist, climate educator and resilience facilitator.
I support individuals, communities and organisations to respond to the challenges and opportunities posed by the climate crisis through cultivating greater strategic, practical and emotional resilience.
Though this looks different depending on whether I’m working with a food business on their sustainability strategy, a community on their climate resilience or a climate-distressed individual seeking support navigating life amidst a crisis, it nearly always involves getting resourced enough to face the reality of the situation, then strengthening their relationships with nature, community and self.
I draw on my own experience of climate-induced existential crisis (more on this below!), over a decade working in the food industry, global travels living with indigenous and intentional communities researching resilience practices and my training as a Climate Reality Leader, Integrative Coach and Hypnosis & Somatics Practitioner to support people to grow their resilience, align their values with their actions, and live joyfully.
What Brought Me Here
If you’re struggling with climate anxiety, or supporting someone who is, here’s my story of moving through the experience, and what I learned along the way:
I’d just graduated with a degree in Psychology and had promptly run off to train as a chef.
Soon after, I began my longed-for career in food, joining the development team of an industry-leading contract caterer and was doing what I loved - the future felt really exciting.
Then I learned 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.
And, I felt lonely because no one else in my world seemed to know how bad things were.
I REALLY 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.
Growing Towards Resilience
I’ve spent the years since working on transforming the food industry from the inside 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 regularly meet people who share the same experience of climate awareness followed by a strong and often lonely sense of "what now?".
Here’s the thing:
If we really want people (and businesses) to cultivate the resilience needed to face and respond to this climate crisis, we need to provide support in coping with the emotional fall-out of having our lives, and businesses turned up-side down.
This is why I trained as a Climate Reality Leader, Climate Grief Facilitator, Somatic Practitioner and Integrative Change Coach.
With this support, I see brilliant, creative, compassionate humans move out of anxiety, grief and paralysis, and into applying themselves to this challenge, rooting out all the possibilities, coming together with a sense of purpose and creating real change.
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.