About
My Story
The Beginning
The path that led me to financial wellbeing wasn't a straight one.
In fact, it began before I was even old enough to remember.
I was born healthy, but just two days later I became critically ill. My heart stopped, I suffered convulsions and my brain was deprived of oxygen. The doctors told my parents that I probably wouldn't survive. My dad was allowed to take just two photographs of me because they didn't think I'd make it. Friends from my mum's church prayed for me to survive.
Against the odds, I did.
Growing up, my parents always told me that I'd been brain damaged at birth. My mum also reminded me what a miracle my life was and told me what the doctors had predicted that I probably wouldn't even be able to ride a bike.
Life turned out rather differently.
Although the lack of oxygen affected me physically, it never affected my ability to think, learn or dream. Most people who meet me today have no idea I have a disability. They don't see the slight weakness on the right side of my body or the extra effort some physical tasks have always taken. They simply see me as me.
When I was in eighth grade, our PE class was learning about different medical conditions. As I read about cerebral palsy, I suddenly realised, "That's what I have." Until then, my parents had always described it as brain damage. Discovering the medical name didn't change anything about my life, but it helped me understand myself a little better.
More importantly, it had never occurred to me that I should expect less from life because of it.
Learning to Keep Going
When I was ten years old, my family moved to the United States. Not long afterwards, I joined our neighbourhood swim team.
I loved being in the water, but swimming didn't come naturally to me. Because of the brain damage I'd experienced at birth, my body didn't always move the way it was supposed to.
Breaststroke and butterfly were the hardest. No matter how hard I trained, I was disqualified time and time again because I couldn't perform the strokes correctly. Backstroke and freestyle suited me much better, but I was never one of the fastest swimmers.
As a child, that was frustrating. I wanted to improve just like everyone else. I wanted to win races. Instead, I often found myself working incredibly hard simply to finish a race without being disqualified.
But I never stopped swimming.
I trained week after week and carried on swimming throughout my teenage years. Even at university, on the days I had lectures, I'd swim before class every time.
Looking back, I realise swimming gave me something far more valuable than medals ever could. It taught me that there isn't always a direct relationship between effort and results. Sometimes you can work harder than almost everyone else and still not come first.
What mattered was that I kept showing up.
At the time, I had no idea that lesson would shape so much of the rest of my life.
Choosing a Different Future
Like many young people, I experimented with drugs and alcohol. At the time, it didn't seem unusual, and I never imagined where that path would eventually lead.
When I was 19, I became seriously ill and needed surgery. During my recovery, I was prescribed Percocet for the pain. I had no idea that medication would change the course of my life.
When the prescription ended, I found myself wanting more.
What followed wasn't one catastrophic decision. It was a series of small decisions that gradually became an addiction. Before long, my life was revolving around obtaining prescription painkillers instead of building the future I had imagined for myself.
By the summer of 1999, I knew my life had to change. Just a few weeks before my twenty-first birthday, I experienced a deeply personal loss that forced me to confront the reality of what addiction was taking from me. It wasn't simply affecting my own life. It was affecting the people I loved and the person I wanted to be.
That became the turning point. Two weeks before my twenty-first birthday, in September 1999, I got clean and sober.
That same month, I started the autumn semester at university. For the next three years, I stayed sober and threw myself into building a different future. I loved learning, immersed myself in my studies and graduated with a degree in Government and International Politics.
University gave me something I hadn't felt for a long time: hope. It reminded me that my past didn't have to determine my future and that, one decision at a time, it was possible to build a very different life.
Building a New Life
After graduating from university, I moved back to the UK.
Despite three years of sobriety, I soon found myself caught in a five-year addiction to crack cocaine and heroin.
I tried to stop many times. I went to rehab, experienced periods of sobriety and relapsed more than once. Recovery wasn't a straight line, and over time I resigned myself to the idea that I would probably die using.
I remember sitting in recovery meetings, watching other people rebuild their lives and thinking, "I don't think this is possible for me." I didn't believe I was capable or deserving of staying clean. I couldn't imagine a future where addiction wasn't part of my life.
Eventually, everything came to a head. I reached such a desperate place that I attempted to take my own life.
Surviving that experience became a turning point.
Recovery still wasn't instant, but something had changed. For the first time, I stopped trying to imagine how I would stay clean forever. I simply became willing to believe that another life might be possible, even if I couldn't see it yet.
A series of opportunities eventually led me to New Zealand. Looking back now, moving there gave me the fresh start I desperately needed and became the beginning of the life I live today.
A Fresh Start
In 2007, I moved to New Zealand on a working holiday visa.
Looking back, I can see that getting on that plane was one of the most important decisions of my life.
I didn't have everything figured out. I was still rebuilding my life and learning what recovery looked like day by day. But for the first time in many years, I was living somewhere that wasn't defined by my past. I had the opportunity to make new choices, surround myself with different people and create a completely different future.
While I was in New Zealand, I met my husband, Fred.
Together, we built a life, and in time we became parents to our two sons. Motherhood gave me an even greater sense of purpose. It wasn't just about staying sober anymore. It was about creating the kind of home and future that I wanted my children to grow up in.
For years, I had believed my life would always be shaped by the mistakes I'd made.
New Zealand taught me something very different.
It showed me that our future isn't determined by our past. It's created by the decisions we make from this point onwards.
Discovering What Was Possible
When our second son, Finn, was born at the end of August 2011, I made a decision. I wanted to regain my fitness and lose the weight I'd gained during pregnancy. About six weeks after he was born, I started walking every evening. I'd push Finn in the double buggy while Hunter came along on his scooter, and together we'd head out for long walks. Week after week, I became stronger, fitter and more confident. The weight gradually came off, and I began to wonder what else I might be capable of.
By Christmas, I knew I wanted to run. On 1 January 2012, Fred drove me to the start of Oakley Creek, a beautiful two-kilometre path that follows a stream through native bush in Auckland. That morning, I ran for a while, then walked, then ran again, making my way to the end of the track. When I got home, I knew I wanted to do it again.
Within six weeks, I was running a seven-and-a-half-kilometre route without stopping. That's when another thought entered my mind: what if I ran a marathon? I signed up for the Auckland Marathon that November and, despite having only started running at the beginning of the year, I crossed the finish line.
Running became much more than a way to keep fit. Over the years that followed, I completed several more marathons, a 50k and eventually a 100-kilometre ultramarathon. Every race reminded me that progress comes from taking the next step, even when the finish line feels a very long way away.
Sometimes I think back to the little girl whose parents had been told she might never even ride a bike because of the brain damage she sustained at birth. If someone had told her that one day she would run 100 kilometres, I don't think she would have believed them. Neither would I.
Understanding How Change Happens
By 2018, I had already started a business in personal development. That journey led me to discover the work of Bob Proctor, and it completely changed the way I understood my own life.
For the first time, I could see the connection between the thoughts I was repeatedly thinking, the decisions I was making and the results I was creating. Looking back over my life, so many things suddenly made sense. I realised that, without even knowing it, I had been creating my future through the beliefs I held, the stories I told myself and the choices I made every day.
It wasn't a magic formula, and it certainly wasn't easy. Understanding something intellectually is one thing. Changing the way you think, make decisions and take action is something else entirely.
I committed myself to applying what I was learning, not just studying it. As my thinking changed, my decisions changed. As my decisions changed, my actions changed. And as my actions changed, my results changed.
Within eighteen months of working with Bob Proctor, my business generated almost £250,000 in annual revenue.
That experience transformed the way I think about change. It convinced me that while our past shapes us, it doesn't have to define us. When we change the way we think, we begin making different decisions. Those different decisions lead to different actions, and over time, they create a different future.
That understanding has shaped every aspect of my work ever since.
Learning From the Best
Discovering Bob Proctor's work eventually led me to another teacher who would have a profound impact on my life: Jack Canfield.
In 2020, I began training with Jack and became a Certified Success Principles Trainer. What impressed me most was that the principles weren't simply motivational ideas. They were practical, timeless and designed to be applied in everyday life.
Since then, I've had the privilege of assisting and coaching at Jack's Breakthrough to Success events, supporting people from around the world as they challenged old ways of thinking, made courageous decisions and created meaningful change in their own lives.
Those experiences strengthened my own understanding of what creates lasting transformation. They reinforced what I had already discovered through my own journey: our future is shaped by the decisions we make, the actions we take and our willingness to keep growing, even when it's uncomfortable.
Today, I bring together everything I've learned through my own life experiences, my business journey and my training to help others create lives with greater purpose, confidence and financial wellbeing.
Creating Better Futures
When I was addicted to crack cocaine and heroin, my world had become incredibly small.
My day revolved around finding the next £10. Every decision I made was driven by survival. My future had disappeared. All I could think about was getting through the next few minutes or hours.
Today, when I think about that £10 note, I can't help but smile at how differently I see it.
Over the years, I've built businesses, trained with some of the world's leading personal development experts, completed marathons and ultramarathons, coached people from many different backgrounds and commissioned research with Newcastle University into financial wellbeing and financial behaviour.
None of those things happened because I became obsessed with money.
They happened because I became committed to becoming the fullest expression of who I could be.
That's why I believe financial wellbeing is about so much more than building wealth.
Financial wellbeing is one of the foundations that gives us the freedom, choice and opportunity to become the fullest expression of who we are.
Money matters because it gives us choices. It allows us to look after our health, spend time with the people we love, contribute to causes we care about, invest in our own growth and create experiences that make life meaningful. It gives us the opportunity to live with greater intention.
Everything I've lived through has shaped the work I do today.
My mission is to help people become the fullest expression of who they are. Through personal development, intentional decision-making and financial wellbeing, I help people create lives with greater freedom, purpose and possibility.
If my life has taught me anything, it's this:
Our future isn't something that happens to us.
It's something we create, one intentional decision at a time.