I grew up on a hobby farm then a 12-acre blueberry farm, both raising fowls and having our own vegetable gardens. In between I lived mainly between Canada, China and Taiwan, from small towns to big cities. The variety of living experiences facilitated developing capacity to engage with diverse peoples and cultures – leading to deep empathy, cultural intelligence and meeting each person where they are at.

I experienced the beginnings of one of the hardest life transitions as an adult, while living in Singapore about to move to Makati, Philippines.

A nine year relationship had abruptly been ended by my partner at the time while I had just discovered that my dad needed me back home, that he likely was suffering from onset dementia. With only my one large suitcase of essentials, I made the move back home to Vancouver.

The day I returned to Vancouver, the 2010 Olympics had just started two days before. Life was a daze. It took me 2 months to finally settle in my own place and begin the long arduous journey of becoming my dad’s caregiver, advocate and guardian. What a steep learning curve it had been. My father passed away in late 2013, I began to experience deep grieving then, the loss of my sense of family and the many roles that no longer existed. Daughter, caregiver, advocate, sense of family…  everything in my life felt and looked different.

I began to search for new paths, which lead me to becoming an avocator, trainer and workshop facilitator of creative and empathetic problem solving, Design Thinking and Service Design Thinking. A few clients recommended that I look up coaching as they felt I was already a natural at coaching, and successfully doing so too.

Fast forward to 2021. The pandemic had meant a lot more down time than I had anticipated. I was facing mental and emotional blocks I couldn’t figure out how to work beyond. I decided to take the risk and go back to school and get formally trained as a coach, since coaching is a natural fit with being a Service Designer, helping to integrate and support the full design, development, and implementation process.

I graduated from UBC’s Organizational Coaching certificate program (ICF accredited) while having co-founding a startup specialized in holistic organizational and service design and people development. The three of us co-founders wanted a way to try testing out our collective passion project. I’m now in the early stages of building my own private coaching practice while being a practitioner of service design.