How Did I Get Into This Work?

• A seed planted

  When I was a teenager, my family set up a business together. Spending time together, creating something together and making it last was the family dream. But misaligned expectations, poor communication and unresolved tensions between people meant family relationships nearly reached breaking point and thousands of pounds of investment were lost.

  Growing up close to what happens when family and business collide and when hopes, expectations and disappointments all land on the same people means I understand the messiness of it, the complexity of it and the cost of it - not only to the couple at the heart of it but to the extended family around them too.

  As an entrepreneurial teenager and someone who cares deeply, that experience never left me and is the reason I do this work.

  I understand the desire to build something with the people you love. I understand the pride of it, the ambition and the complexity of it. And I know what is at stake when it goes wrong.

• Understanding people and systems

  I grew up in an army family and moving around means there isn't a place that's home to me. That experience, combined with living with dyslexia and dysgraphia, meant I learnt early what it means to live inside systems, to feel at odds within them and to find your own way through.

  At nineteen I took myself to Spain to teach English. That turned into two years moving between Spain, Italy and Greece and running my own small business, adapting constantly, learning from every person and every place I encountered. This was my first experience of entrepreneurship and taught me that I was someone who could build something from little resources.

  I came back to the UK with a clearer sense of who I was and a deeper curiosity about how people live, work and make meaning together.

• Training that shaped my work

  That curiosity led me to Aberdeen University where I studied for a four-year MA in Anthropology, the study of how people create meaning through their beliefs, relationships, behaviours and social structures. It was the perfect foundation for the work I do today. I funded my studies by continuing to run my tutoring business throughout.

  From there I trained for an MSc in Person-Centred Counselling, bridging psychology with real-world human experience. I set up in private practice working with individuals, couples and families and quickly recognised that I wanted to work more actively and practically, moving people from where they were to where they wanted to be.

  That led me to training in applied coaching and behavioural change, and then to business coaching. But offering support with sales and marketing never felt right. I cared about the system - the people inside the business, the relationships between them, the dynamics that determined whether everything held together or quietly fell apart.

  I wanted to combine everything I had learned rather than keep it in separate boxes.

• Coming full circle

  In 2024 I founded The Extended Family Company®. For me, it was a moment where everything came together.

  This work has been in training for many years - my personal experience of what family business can cost; my years of living and working across different cultures and contexts; academic grounding in how people and systems work; clinical training and practise in therapy, counselling, coaching and training as a civil and commercial mediator. All this experience means I can properly support couples and families through relationships and the messiness of business.

  None of my work or experience has been a straight line but every part of it led here.

• What I believe

  The long-term success of a family business depends not only on strategy and financial performance, but also on relationships, communication and shared purpose amongst all the people involved.

  A family business is a living, relational system. Family psychology, identity, loyalty, conflict and power interact constantly with money, leadership and ownership. Most advisors are equipped to work with one side of that. I am trained and passionate to work with all of it.

  Because I know what it looks like when it goes wrong and I know what becomes possible when it goes right.