Everyone else went to university.
I went to the barn.
I have never had a normal résumé and I have stopped apologizing for it.
While most of my peers were at university working on their degrees, I was forging a different path.
I walked away from traditional education for the chance to study, and later teach, at the learning centre of a world renowned horse whisperer. I went for the horsemanship. I stayed because I realized fairly quickly that the horsemen were not the teachers. The horses were.
I have never looked back.
I wrote If Your Horse Could Talk.
I built Harmonious Horsemanship, a practice specializing in equine behaviour consultation and the rehabilitation of traumatized horses. A lot of that work was with animals other people had given up on. Shut down, dangerous, or both. It taught me to read a nervous system before it escalated, and to stay regulated when the situation was not.
From 2015 to 2021 I was Equestrian Program Director at Queen Margaret's School, where I was the visionary behind their Equine Facilitated Leadership and Wellness programs.
Then I quit, knowing I was ready for something more and having no idea what it was.
A few years after my mom died, I took a workshop where one of the topics was legacy.
We were asked to brainstorm our proudest moments. Everyone around me started writing. I sat there with nothing. When I ran through my accomplishments they felt hollow. Not potent enough to be the legacy I wanted to leave.
And then my eyes filled and I knew.
My proudest moments were the ones I spent with my mom when she was sick and dying.
Despite the grief, despite the fear of losing her, I found a presence and a strength in me that moved me past my own experience. I was able to set down my role as her daughter and support her the way she needed to be supported. I was able to tell her it was okay to stop the antibiotics that were keeping her alive and making her feel terrible every day, if that was what she wanted. I held her hand while she cried and told me what she was afraid of.
And I pulled together the mishmash of tools and techniques I had gathered over the years, and used them to help her settle her nervous system, her mind, her emotions, and her soul.
There were many days I drove her down to the beach and we sat in the car, because she was too weak to walk. All those trainings that had seemed so random suddenly made sense, as the two of us dropped into a deep and unhurried calm.
I have been an equine behaviour specialist, a Reiki master teacher, and an equine facilitated wellness professional. I have worked for a world famous horse whisperer, in schools, and in the hunter jumper industry.
None of it was random. It was all the same skill.
I understood that in a conference room, years before I did anything with it.
Presence under the hardest conditions available is a skill, and it is trainable. It is the same skill a leader needs when the ground moves and the plan stops working and everyone in the room is watching to see what her face does. That is what I teach now.
I combine two things.
Reading what is going on beneath the surface, which is what twenty-five years with horses will teach you whether you want it or not. And building rooms where people are safe enough to get uncomfortable, which is the part that actually changes something.
I work with values-led women. Founders, executives, the ones who have become the person everyone else brings their hard thing to. I take them out of the environment that normally defines them, through the edge where they have been stuck, and back into contact with their own read.
Not faster. Truer.
mPeak Trained Mindfulness Coach, UCSD Center for Mindfulness
Dual Certified Learning Professional and Equine Professional, Professional Association for Equine Facilitated Wellness
Dual Certified Mentor, Professional Association for Equine Facilitated Wellness
Certified Reiki Master and Teacher, Usui Method
Author, If Your Horse Could Talk
Twenty-five years learning leadership from horses, and sixteen teaching it
Training and certification
Based on the premise that we are part of a greater whole, and that nature has a great deal to teach us about running a business in a way that is good for the world.
We lead like a horse. Decisions big and small are made with the safety and survival of the whole herd in mind, whether the herd is our clients, our community, or the world.
We are systems thinkers. We look at the whole picture, and measure how our actions land on the people, places, animals, and environment around us, directly and indirectly.
We learn and grow. Taking accountability for our impact, even when it is uncomfortable, is what lets us adapt in a world that will not hold still.
We're intentional. Everything we do has a purpose. If it does not serve the work or the people in it, it does not stay.
Our code of ethics
You're leading through more change than any playbook prepared you for. Field Notes is the monthly letter for leaders learning to read it differently. Ground. Read the whole field. Move in real time.
Once a month, one lesson or tool from the method. How to ground before you read anyone else. How to read the whole field. How to move in real time, with confidence instead of anxiety.
Be first through the door. Open is our free live classes and meditations, open to every values-led woman. Field Notes subscribers hear the moment registration opens.
Come back to your own read.
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