About Me

I am a fully qualified, experienced, professional coach based in Edinburgh. I work with people as unique individuals to make positive change and get the results they want in their personal and professional life.

Career Background

I have been coaching and developing people for over 25 years and set up Bright Thinking in 2009 to help people make positive changes in their life and live happier, more purposeful lives.

Previously I spent ten years with financial services company Aegon as a training consultant and management development coach and four years before that running my own IT Training consultancy. During that time, I helped literally thousands of people, across a wide variety of businesses to develop their skills, but it was only when I started coaching people one-to-one around 2006, that I feel I really started tapping into people’s potential and making a real difference to their lives.

I spent my last few years with Aegon, coaching managers as part of a wider management development programme and was amazed at how effective coaching was at helping people resolve their issues, usually around dealing with people, work/life balance, career direction, confidence and assertiveness.

I have since spent my time coaching private clients on many of the same issues and, whether it’s for business or life, coaching is still the most effective personal development and change tool I’ve come across.

My Journey…

From a personal perspective, coaching has also had a massive impact on my life and has been the main driver in the transformation from the stressed, cynical person I was to the relaxed, happy person I am now.

After a disastrous first marriage and a lifetime of negative self beliefs, despite a charmed upbringing I might add, I developed a protective persona of a super confident, independent, career girl and focused my attention on my career and chasing the lifestyle – sound familiar? When I reached my late thirties, however, I realised I wasn’t happy. Nothing was fun anymore, I was stressed, had terrible road rage, and I felt bored and jaded most of the time. I had everything I thought I ever wanted, a great social life, money, romance, but something was missing.

Thinking that I just needed a career change, I set about researching different options and reading self development books and, in the process, discovered coaching as a self development tool and a career in its own right. Talk about a Eureka moment! I was half an hour into my first ever coaching course when I realised that it was the career for me and, through coaching (and tools like Mind Detox and Emotional Freedom Technique) I feel like I have found myself and a renewed sense of purpose in my life. Like everyone, I still have my off days but I feel like I’m ‘me’ again which is wonderful.

It has been obvious throughout this process that my experience is not unique. I speak to people every day who are disillusioned at work, who feel stressed and anxious and want to slow down but don’t feel they have a choice. I see people who have been made redundant, people who have walked away from huge salaries because they want a life, and amazing, clever, beautiful, people who lack confidence or believe they are not good enough in some way.

Whatever the problem, coaching helps. I watch clients visibly relax, grow in confidence and self-awareness and become more contented and peaceful during the coaching process – and that’s before their goals have even been achieved. 

It is truly a privilege and an honour to be part of that process. As Shakespeare once said…

“This above all, to thine own self be true”.

My sentiments exactly…