About me
My work is about the wonder that wakes up the heart, bridging the sacred and secular, the scientific and the spiritual.
I am a ritual designer, creative facilitator, idea doula and ‘serendipiter’.
For 19 years, I have been creating experiences designed to connect us to our creativity, to each other, to ourselves and to the possibility of wonder.
As a ritual designer, I create bespoke ceremonies to honour the thresholds in our lives, be that a rite of passage for an organization at a point of transition, an individual stepping across a threshold in life or work, or any number of other transformations that call for a moment of meaning. For example, I co-created and co-facilitated a two-day retreat for the World Economic Forum, working with the team who curate and create Davos. I also collaborated with world-renowned neuroscientist Beau Lotto to explore the relationship between meaning-making, perception, and ritual in a groundbreaking event in New York for L'Oréal.
As a creative facilitator, I remind individuals and organisations how to play, get creative and shift their perspective so that they see the world afresh. I work with people of all values and beliefs, creating experiential journeys designed to help people reconnect with their creative inspiration, access flow states and align their work with meaningful purpose. I have designed and led experiential workshops for everyone from 7-year-olds to CEOs, working with organisations as diverse as Google, the United Nations, the BBC, the Law Society, Lush, the Ministry of Justice and Bank of America.
I also spent a year creating bespoke experiential adventures for a world-leading department of quantum physicists at the Centre for Quantum Photonics in Bristol University, who labeled me as the “creative angel, sage, oracle, and advisor in residence”. (Their words, not mine.)
As an idea doula, I support entrepreneurs, creators and people of all artistic disciplines as well as levels of experience to bring their ideas to life, connecting to their innate creativity as the key to sustainable inspiration. I have helped “birth” books, businesses, albums, personal pilgrimages, projects and events, from a celebrated book about death and dying to a company curating bespoke adventure boxes.
As a ‘serendipiter’, I guide people on mini adventures that activate pronoia - the idea that the world is secretly conspiring to shower you with blessings - through random acts of kindness and covert acts of beauty. I also practise what I preach and write love letters to strangers and leave them in nooks all over the city.
I am a visiting lecturer at the University of the Arts London where I teach ritual design and mentor students with their creative projects. I am also a trainer and course designer with Abracademy - where my official title is Wonder Woman - and an associate at Meeting Facilitators where I bring my expertise in creativity, communication, and how to make work feel like play.
I spent a year broadcasting live to Psychologies online community of 1.3 million subscribers every month and have been featured in Psychologies magazine, The Sunday Times, Amica, ES magazine, and Radio 4's Digital Human. My role as ritual designer at Grace Gelder’s self-marriage in 2014 was part of a viral news story that was covered by international media outlets from broadsheets and tabloids to radio and talk shows the world over. In 2012, I co-produced a 36 hour long immersive theatre production for an audience of one in San Francisco, which was covered by the New York Times.
As a voiceover artist, I have worked with clients such as the BBC, Pearson Education, and AXA, and narrated the eight-part series The Retreat which was screened on prime time BBCTV and then on Netflix. I am also a prolific singer-songwriter who has recorded and performed everywhere from India to Italy and LA to London, continuing to write and perform for pleasure, as well as singing on a Hollywood movie soundtrack in 2017.
I got into Oxford University to read English literature at the age of 16 and have studied everything from poetry to playwork and showmanship to shamanism, exploring a wide variety of personal development techniques and learning that many different paths lead to the same mountain top.
I also founded a successful not-for-profit, now dormant, set up to remind parents and children how to connect through playing in nature, which was granted £238k in BIG Lottery funding, and went on to run residential workshops for hundreds of families.
I have been a keynote speaker at Google, Sunday Assembly, and the UN International Day of Happiness and my TEDx talk ‘Why we still need ritual’ has had over 29k views.
(It has also been known to make people cry.
Go on. Watch it. And if you find that it brings a tear to your eye, let me know.)
I live on my beautiful houseboat in London and I am exploring the creation of a “monastery for artists and experience designers” somewhere in Europe, where moments of meaning are made as magical artworks and experiences are both created and gifted, as acts of collaborative creativity and sacred, soulful generosity.
If this inspires you as much as it does me, get in touch.