Hello and welcome.
I didn't take a straight path into this work. I began my career as a chemical engineer, later holding senior roles with ICI, DuPont, and Zeneca. Over time, I found myself increasingly drawn to people, especially how they change and grow when familiar ways of working and living start to shift.
My work is shaped as much by lived experience as by professional training.
I grew up in working-class Glasgow council tenements and became the first in my family to attend university. At 30, I went through a profound personal turning point that changed the direction of my life. It set off a long period of re-orientation — one that still shapes how I understand change, how people grow through uncertainty, and who we become.
In 2006, I founded The Awakened Leader Consultancy, where I work with senior leaders and organisations navigating significant transition — periods when established ways of working are no longer sufficient for what comes next.
Clients value my ability to get to the root cause quickly, bring clarity to complexity, and offer fresh insight that helps move things forward — while holding the human reality of it all with calm and steadiness.
My approach is grounded in many years of contemplative practice including over a decade of Vipassana meditation and annual silent retreats, alongside more than 25 years of reflective journaling and Jungian dream work. These disciplines have cultivated my capacity for deep listening, clear perception and pattern recognition, enabling me to help leaders see more clearly into complex challenges, deepen self-awareness, and make more conscious, effective choices.
Outside of work, I have a love of poetry and horses. I divide my time between Edinburgh and Andalucía, where I ride and continue developing my Spanish. My poetry has been published in several journals, and I hope to write in Spanish one day.
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My approach integrates evidence-based tools with depth practices to surface what sits beneath conscious awareness, including psychometrics, 360 feedback and work with shadow, dreams, mindfulness, and somatic practice. Together, these reveal the patterns shaping leadership and support deeper, more sustainable change.
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
EE Cummings
