Mentor, Explorer, Wayfinder and quiet Rebel
The Story Beneath My Work
Learning to live my truth - unapologetically & sharing the mess and the magic.
I was born in East Berlin and grew up between tenderness and rupture — early loss, political upheaval, and cultural change sharpened my sensitivity to what lives beneath the surface.
A lifelong ache for discovery carried me across continents, shaping a global perspective. I walked through polished corridors of corporate life and the stillness of personal thresholds: loss, uncertainty, reinvention.
After 15 years in an international career, I chose to step away — guided by a conviction that there was another way.
Coaching found me, and for more than a decade I’ve studied and practised it across disciplines, weaving my lived experience with solid professional training and thousands of coaching hours.
My journey has taught me that transformation isn’t about fixing or striving. It lives in honest self-awareness and discovery, in listening to the body, in meeting ourselves at life’s true pivots.
Grief and loss clarified what matters; they stripped away what wasn’t true and anchored me in what is.
Today, I walk beside others on their own journey — as they rediscover rhythm, clarity, and direction.
From ME to YOU
-
The stories, places, and people that shape our path become the quiet architects of who we are, weaving spaces where we can return to ourselves.
For me, this space is SUKAVANA - a name born from exploration that became a sanctuary, a compass, a way of being and of conscious leadership.
It lives at the heart of everything I do: a life rooted in love, steeped in gratitude, appreciation, and curiosity.
-
From this ground grew The Altitude Room — my 1:1 coaching and mentoring space and other personalised ways to explore your inner landscape.
I also hold bespoke seasonal retreats in the Southern African and inner wilderness — places where we slow down enough to hear what life is whispering.
Because life is always evolving… and where the magic happens is often in those tender spaces between endings and beginnings.
-
… the right questions can emerge - the ones not immediately obvious, the ones where truth lies buried beneath layers of expectation, fear, and conditioning.
This is a way of being, a space to grow.
SUKAVANA’s Roots
-
SUKAVANA rests on a simple, unwavering belief: transformation begins in the quiet space of thresholds — those liminal moments where the old no longer fits and the new hasn’t yet taken shape.
It is a philosophy that trusts what is already here: the body’s intelligence, the rhythm of nature, the pulse of lived experience.
Knowledge isn’t imposed; it’s co-created — a living scaffolding where contemporary science and timeless insights stand side by side.
At its heart is a deep trust in human wholeness: every person carries an inner compass, and protective patterns are not flaws but intelligent strategies shaped by life.
This is a space held by values of depth, presence, truth, dignity, and compassion.
What matters most is clarity , courage, and the kind of beauty that doesn’t shout.
The purpose is simple and radical: to return to what is truly meaningful, to navigate change with steadiness and grace, to live from inner authority.
Praxis is co-created, and seasonal - guided by conversation, experimentation and ritual.
The language is warm, real, soul-led, and courageous, carrying the quiet invitation at the centre of it all: to let your truth lead the way.
-
This work lives at the intersection of soul, science, and lived experience.
At its heart are a few simple truths:
wholeness is our nature,
your wisdom is already within you,
embodied courage grows from curiosity - not pressure - and
beauty, especially in imperfection, opens a doorway.
From this ground, the way I hold space is guided by presence, honesty, and a deep respect for the body–mind–spirit connection.
We work with the intelligence of the nervous system, the body, the rhythm of nature, and the stories we carry.
We move through reflection, sensation, and conversation—not by forcing change, but by allowing what’s there to surface.
Every journey is tailored, nonlinear, and co-created. We honour your rhythm rather than rushing toward outcomes.
This is about remembering, realigning, and walking your path with steadiness and truth.
-
Certifications
Executive Coach (ICF-PCC, EMCC Senior Practitioner)
Accredited Member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC)
Embodiment Coach
Positive Intelligence | Mental Fitness Coach
Trauma Coaching
Solution Focused Coaching in Organisations
Positive Psychology
Emotional Intelligence | Agility
Cultural Intelligence
Intercultural Trainer
BA Hons Business & Cultural Studies
Trainings
Neuroscience: Embodied Intelligence - Somatic Leadership
Somatic Experiencing
Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy
Trauma & Attachment Training
Somatic Coaching
Grief Yoga
In-Training
Jungian Coaching and Dreamwork & Symbolism (CAJS | JCS)
Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB)
Professional Experience
Over 1,500 hours of professional coaching conversations with leaders and seekers across cultures
25+ years of cross-cultural immersion — lived and worked in multiple cultures, across continents
20+ years of working with people from all walks of life and across industries
Continuous professional development (ICF / EMCC)
Regular supervision
Regular peer coaching / learning
-
In my work, I draw on the research, teachings and practice of: Bayo Akomolafe - Hugo Alberts - Tara Brach - Lisa Feldman Barrett - Amanda Blake - Richard Boyatzis - Brené Brown - Shirzad Chamine - Susan David - Paul Denniston - Jim Dethmer - Alan Fogel - Paul Raymond Gilbert - Rick Hanson - Carl G. Jung - Peter Levine - Sarah McKay - Erin Meyer - Kristin Neff - Sophie Oluwole - Wendy Palmer - Diane Poole Heller - Stephen Porges - Richard Schwartz - Dan Siegel - Doug Silsbee - David A. Treleaven - Bessel van der Kolk - Mark Walsh
-
My approach draws on evidence-based and integrative modalities including:
• Positive Psychology
• Applied Neuroscience & Behavioural Science
• Cultural Psychology
• Positive Intelligence®
• Somatic Experiencing™
• Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness®
• Somatic & Embodiment Coaching
• Trauma- and Polyvagal-Informed Coaching
• Integrative / Somatic Grief Work
• Nervous System Regulation Practices
• Emotional & Cultural Intelligence Coaching
• Archetypal and Symbolic Inquiry
• Narrative and Reflective Inquiry
The Long Story
-
It all began with a postcard from Mozambique — sent by my great-uncle on one of his trips. His cards and stories stirred something deep in me: a fascination with faraway places, invisible histories, and the quiet forces that shape us.
I was born in Berlin and grew up in East Germany during the 1970s and 80s — between the city and early years by the Baltic Sea. My childhood unfolded within both tenderness and rupture: early loss, the rigidity of school life, the political upheaval of the late 1980s, and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
One morning, I woke up inside a new system with foreign rules and values, leaving behind dreams and friendships. I learned to read the room. To listen to the stories that don’t shout. To move between worlds. To keep going.
Even then, there was a quiet calling: “There must be another way.”
-
That whisper grew into wanderlust — that carried me across continents. In the early 1990s, I left Berlin and built a life across London, Melbourne, and now Cape Town.
I’ve walked paths that led from corporate boardrooms to inner wilderness, from lonely departures to quiet homecomings. I stood at crossroads and walked through thresholds — they became my teachers: loss, uncertainty, heartbreak, exhaustion, reinvention, and the silent space of questioning.
Time and again, I left behind what no longer fit, without knowing what the next yes would be. I arrived by challenging the status quo — gently but persistently.
In those dawning moments, the hardest thing wasn’t pushing forward — it was stopping long enough to learn to listen what’s true beneath the noise. -
My international corporate career allowed me to work across cultures, manage high-profile events and teams, travel across the world, and navigate the spaces between structure and freedom.
After 13 years in London, I boarded a one-way flight to Cape Town with no plan — only the knowing that something new had to take root.
In 2012, coaching found me. It gave language to what I had felt for years: people don’t need to be fixed — they need space to hear and feel themselves clearly.
Since then, I’ve trained internationally in multiple coaching approaches and woven what I learn directly into my practice. It’s shaped by 25+ years of living and working across cultures and over 1,500 hours of coaching with clients worldwide.
Today, my work brings together what I love most: travelling, researching, learning, and sharing. -
My early survival strategies were sharp: perfectionism, control, intellectualisation. They kept me moving — but left something essential untouched. Beneath the success was unprocessed grief, personal and inherited.
Everything shifted when my body began speaking truths my mind couldn’t find words for. I began reading, studying, and experimenting. I turned toward somatic practices — not just as a client but eventually as a practitioner-in-training — and slowly began to come home to myself.
In 2022 and 2023, a cascade of losses — my grandfather, my partner, my best friend — cracked everything open. Grief — which I only came to truly understand during this time — became my teacher. It clarified what matters and stripped away everything that didn’t. This was an immersive season of study and practice — not to collect labels, but to integrate my experience and heal. I trained in the work I needed most. And the answers unfolded when I stopped performing for safety.
The most crucial lesson has been this: self-awareness and social awareness are the ground everything else rests on. Knowing who we are and what we stand for — our direction, strengths, and shadows — gives us that ground. Without it, prolonged stress erodes even the strongest resolve. With it, we can anchor in our truth, let go of what no longer serves, and meet life with clarity and courage.
Wisdom doesn’t come from thinking alone. It comes from noticing, from living.
-
Today, I am a woman shaped by deep listening, by silence and poetry, by land and language, and by the longings we don’t always know how to name.
I speak the language of seasons, elements, and thresholds — places where change reveals itself slowly.
Photography and creative expression are my ways of seeing more honestly. I live attuned to nature’s rhythm — to solstices, equinoxes, inner tides.
What looks like reinvention has always been a return — to what aligns now.
Change that lasts doesn’t come from striving. It comes from quiet strength, sustainable steps, and remembering what we’ve always carried within us.
-
These years have shaped me into the person and coach I am today. The path hasn’t been linear, but it has been honest. And that has made all the difference.
My work lives at the intersection of intellect and intuition, structure and soul.
I walk with others as they learn to trust their own wisdom and rhythm.I believe in moving gently, breaking patterns with compassion, and trusting that even in the hardest seasons, something wise is unfolding.
And so, I walk my talk — with soul, integrity, and wonder.
Always learning. Always listening. Always becoming.