Connecting my business experience with health and wellbeing.
Understanding people and behaviour has been a life-long fascination for me. I’ve always felt the curiosity to dig beneath what influences human habits and how we choose to live our lives.
It was this interest in people and behaviour that led me to study marketing at university. I was lucky enough to have a successful corporate marketing career spanning more than 15 years where I worked for leading hospitality companies like The Restaurant Group and Whitbread. I also spent eight happy years at Heineken where I eventually led the team responsible for the Heineken brand in the UK. It was a real privilege to lead one of the biggest and most recognised brands in the world.
Over the years I’ve led big teams, small teams, newly formed teams and experienced teams. I’ve worked for some truly inspirational leaders, been through multiple organisational restructures, experienced great cultures and witnessed toxic environments. Through it all I’ve learnt a lot about leadership, culture and what it means to have a human centric workplace.
But I’ve also experienced first-hand the pressure leaders are under, the need to deliver commercially and the increasing complexity that comes with leading an organisation in such an unpredictable world. It’s this deep understanding that I bring to the work I do now because I’ve been there, I get it.
My next chapter.
As I reached director level in my corporate career, I knew the path ahead of me was not the one I was currently on. I had experienced and witnessed how many people were struggling with their health in the workplace. Once I had a seat around the most senior table, I began to feel a strong desire to be part of the solution. This is what ultimately led me to leave my corporate career and retrain as a Health Coach.
At the time, a lot of people didn’t understand my decision. Just as I was reaching the top of my profession, and I was what many people would class as a ‘success’, I was leaving it behind. Most people in my close and wider circle had never heard of Health Coaching, but I knew this was the beginning of my next chapter.
They say that when you’re on the right path and following what you’re meant to do in life, doors begin to open - and that’s exactly what happened on my journey. Meeting Harry, the founder of Elevo (the company I now work for), was one of those moments. Together with our brilliant team, we’re building a business dedicated to improving people’s health and wellbeing at work.
I feel incredibly grateful to be in this position, but I also recognise that I made the decisions and took the risks to move my life in this direction. This is why I’m so passionate about people taking control of their lives and knowing that change is possible, but we are the ones that have to drive it.