About
Hi, I'm Sarah.
I've spent a lot of my working life being the person people come to when something is complicated.
I've spent a lot of my working life being the person people come to when something is complicated.
My background is in higher education, executive education and business, where I've developed programmes, built partnerships, managed complex projects and businesses, worked with senior stakeholders and helped turn rather messy situations into something people can actually move forward with.
I've always been interested in people as much as the problem in front of us. How we think. Why perfectly capable people get stuck. Why we can know exactly what we should do and still find it extraordinarily difficult to do it. And why the strategies that appear to work for everybody else sometimes simply don't work for us.
That curiosity eventually led me into coaching.
Many of the people I work with are intelligent, conscientious and very good at what they do.
From the outside, they often look as though they have everything under control.
On the inside, it can feel rather different.
They may be carrying too much, questioning what they want next, struggling to prioritise, constantly second-guessing themselves, working incredibly hard to stay on top of things, or wondering why something that appears straightforward seems to require so much effort.
Some have ADHD, often recognised much later in life. Some don't.
Some are at a significant transition point in their career or life. Others can't necessarily identify one big problem — they just know that the way they are doing things now isn't quite working anymore.
That is often where our conversations begin.
I don't believe that most people need another person telling them to try harder, become more disciplined or adopt somebody else's perfect morning routine.
And I'm not particularly interested in turning you into a more efficient version of someone you were never meant to be.
I'm much more interested in helping you understand how you work.
What gives you energy and what drains it. What you're naturally good at. What matters to you. Where you may be trying to meet expectations that no longer fit. What keeps getting in the way. And what might happen if, instead of continually pushing against yourself, you started working with yourself.
That doesn't mean our conversations are endlessly reflective. I am practical by nature.
We will make sense of what is happening, but we will also work out what you want to do about it.
I'll ask questions, notice patterns, challenge assumptions, help you untangle competing thoughts and, when appropriate, hold you accountable for actually trying something different.
I won't tell you how to run your life.
But I also won't simply nod sympathetically for an hour.
I have spent much of my career working in and around universities, executive education and complex organisations.
I understand environments where the work is never really finished, where there are competing priorities and complicated relationships, and where being competent can sometimes result in being given even more to carry.
That gives me a particular interest in working with women in academia and higher education, as well as people running businesses, leading teams or navigating demanding professional careers.
I understand the language and the context, but coaching gives us somewhere to focus on the person inside all of that.
I trained as an ADHD coach with Leanne Maskell of ADHD Works, and I work particularly with adults who have been diagnosed with, or begun to recognise, ADHD later in life.
For many people, that means revisiting years of assumptions about motivation, productivity, organisation, emotional regulation and what they thought were personal failings.
Good ADHD coaching isn't about finding increasingly elaborate ways to force yourself into conventional systems. It is about understanding your brain well enough to build approaches that actually fit.
That principle runs through much of my coaching, whether or not someone has ADHD.
I'm currently completing additional training as a Certified Women's Coach with One of Many.
It has added another dimension to my work, particularly around the ways capable women can become accustomed to achieving through effort, responsibility and constantly holding everything together.
I'm increasingly interested in what happens when we question that model.
Can you still be ambitious without constantly pushing? Can you be responsible without taking responsibility for everything? Can you achieve without sacrificing yourself in the process?
And what changes when you stop automatically doing what you can do and start asking what you actually want to do?
Those are conversations I'm very interested in having.
I'd describe my coaching as thoughtful, practical, curious and direct.
There is room for humour. There is room for uncertainty. You don't need to turn up having done your homework, knowing exactly what your goal is or having found the perfect words to explain what is going on.
Messy is fine.
Often, working out what the real question is becomes some of the most useful work we do.
What I will bring is curiosity, structure where it helps, challenge when it is needed, and a genuine interest in understanding what will work for you rather than prescribing what should work.
I'm based in Exeter and, when I'm not coaching or working on a complicated project, I increasingly like doing things that involve rather less time in front of a screen.
I love making things, particularly pottery and sculpture, getting outside, walking the dog and having projects on the go that allow me to experiment without necessarily knowing what the finished thing is going to look like.
There is probably a coaching metaphor in there somewhere.
You don't need to know what kind of coaching you need before getting in touch.
You might have ADHD. You might be questioning your career. You might be running a business. You might have reached the point where you're tired of being the person who holds everything together.
Or you might simply have something you can't quite work out on your own.
A first conversation is just that: a conversation.
A free intro call is a no-pressure way to see if we're a good fit.