About
I want to help my clients to learn from me and benefit from the experience of working with me, not only to address present challenges, but to be more empowered in the future as well. My undergraduate degree is in science (Zoology). This education allows me to understand technical aspects of conflict issues such as medical situations. During the course of MBA studies I soaked up perspectives of organizational development, strategic planning, and management communication that have informed my work assisting organizations to become more conflict competent.
As well as having aptitudes suited to practicing mediation, I was also born a teacher. I have been delivering a course in conflict management at Royal Roads University for 15 years. At the Justice Institute I’m one of only a few instructors who have taught out of the Centre for Conflict Resolution as well as the Centre for Leadership. In my 20s I taught skiing, sailing, and meditation.
I’m able to connect with a very wide variety of people, including different cultures, and enjoy helping out in very practical ways. At the same time I seek depth understandings which you will see reflected in my blog posts at my site theconflictjourney. Combine these with diverse life experience and the result is someone who has familiarity with many types of situations and affinity for many forms of emotional and subjective experience. For example, I’ve enjoyed the opportunities I have had to work in Indigenous communities and the special learning I have acquired from those experiences.
Five years of my early adult life were considerably devoted to meditation and exploring consciousness and human potential. I didn’t expect these to become linked with practicing mediation, but I have learned that conflict can deeply challenge how we relate to ourselves or even how we understand the world. I empathize with my clients when they are deeply impacted.
I originate from Ottawa, where both of my parents’ families were deeply rooted in the history of that city, but I have made my home on the west coast. I reside in a 110 year-old house in the Fernwood urban village of Victoria, BC. My life partner is artist and teacher Gail Sibley, who grew up in Jamaica. We share interests in travel and the arts, as well as a deep love for the natural world.
