Body of Work
Given the nature of my work, I think it's important to know a little about the person you're choosing to work with.
I've come to understand my body of work as something much more expansive than my professional experience. It includes the relationships I've built, the things I've created and contributed to, the experiences that have shaped me, and the questions that continue to influence how I understand myself and the world around me.
Reading Pamela Slim's Body of Work helped me begin to see these different parts of my life as interconnected, rather than separate. Over time, that understanding has continued to evolve, particularly as I've become more curious about wholeness and what it means to bring more of ourselves into the work we do.
This is a snapshot of mine.
25+ years of working with people and organizations
My career has taken me across the charitable, higher education, tourism and community sectors, with more than 25 years of progressive leadership experience in philanthropy, communications and marketing, community engagement and organizational change.
Along the way, I've led teams and multimillion-dollar portfolios, developed philanthropic programs and fundraising campaigns, built partnerships, worked closely with boards and senior leadership teams, and led strategic planning and community engagement processes. I've had the opportunity to work with people and organizations across Canada, often navigating complex challenges and bringing different perspectives into conversation.
These experiences have given me a deeper appreciation for the complexity of the systems we're part of, the relationships that sustain them, and how our assumptions about leadership, success and progress influence what's possible.
Dialogue, Engagement and facilitation
For more than 15 years, facilitation and dialogue have been woven through my work.
I've led facilitation for SFU's Tales from Terminal City, facilitated at the Karen Armstrong Compassion in Religion Conference, led spaces of inquiry into dialogue and peace research, co-facilitated Nipissing University's most recent strategic planning process, and designed gatherings for teams, leaders and communities.
My formal learning in Peace & Conflict Studies, Dialogue & Civic Engagement and Public Participation continues to inform this work, alongside ongoing facilitation practice and education and an international network of facilitators I continue to learn with and from.
I currently sit on the National Board for IAP2 Canada.
Through this work, I've become increasingly interested in what happens when we create space for people to bring different perspectives, experiences and ways of knowing into conversation. Dialogue has taught me a great deal about complexity, the importance of relationships, and our capacity to understand one another without necessarily arriving at agreement.
Life experience + learning
Some of my deepest learning hasn't come through work at all.
Experiences of loss, trauma and grief led me toward embodiment and a deeper curiosity about the body, nature, movement, creativity, intuition and different ways of knowing.
That curiosity has also shaped what I've chosen to study, including the Feminine Embodiment Coaching program at the School of Embodied Arts, the Intuitive Leadership Intensive with Sydney Blum and Josh Litwin, and Level One Reiki training. My ongoing learning and practice also draws from my own ancestral modalities and ways of knowing.
These experiences have led me to question why we so often treat our emotions, bodies, intellect and intuition as separate, rather than recognizing how deeply interconnected they are in shaping how we understand ourselves and the world around us.
They continue to influence how I listen, facilitate, lead and relate to others.
What Inspires Me
I'm endlessly curious about people, places, relationships and the ways we make meaning. I'm drawn to nature and the seasons, storytelling, creativity, public spaces, ancestral ways of knowing and the conditions that help us feel connected to ourselves and one another.
Increasingly, I'm thinking about our capacity for discernment in a rapidly changing world. As technology reshapes how we communicate and understand what's real, I wonder how we can cultivate the awareness, critical thinking and relationships needed to make responsible decisions.
Birch + Bloom brings these different threads together through an evolving gathering practice grounded in dialogue, reflection, creativity, nature and embodied experience.
I'm not interested in developing a fixed methodology or claiming to have the answers. I'm interested in creating thoughtful, supportive spaces where we can bring more of our humanity into the questions we're navigating and explore what becomes possible together.