I didn’t start off as coach. My first career was in arts management and administration. After working for nearly 14 years at a renowned national dance agency on the Senior Leadership Team, I had to make a lot of my team redundant, and I questioned why I was still there as my views didn’t really align with the other decision makers and I wasn’t being heard.

I decided to resign and take some time out – something that didn’t go down brilliantly at home as we didn’t have the flexibility in our budget. But I felt like I’d be selling my soul and losing part of myself if I stayed. I knew I needed to take some time to reflect on my experiences and decide on what was important to me. And I realised that supporting people’s growth was what I excelled at and what gave me most joy.

Thankfully, I was successful in my application for a grant from Arts Council England to support some professional development and training – and this included training as an Action Learning Facilitator with the Action Learning Associates and as a Coach with Relational Dynamics 1^st (RD1st). This experience was transformative. It rebuilt my confidence (I got a distinction; such a boost) and ignited my passion again. And it gave me my second career – though it was a slow burner.

My grant required me to do some “community engagement” work and this involved me delivering subsidised coaching sessions to the arts and culture community – so essentially it provided my first clients, and my first experience of self-promotion – something that’s always felt icky to me and probably why I took on some strategic development work for arts organisations and maintained a portfolio career for quite a while.

Though I was gaining coaching experience, I was aware that most people I coached already had some awareness of who I was and had quite a similar background and I wanted to see how agile my skills were, so I signed up to do some voluntary work with Shaw Trust which supports people who have been long term unemployed. This was a tough but rewarding experience but sadly I couldn’t stay long as I found out that I was expecting my third child and there were complications. It was quite a daunting time.

I’d known about Dancers Career Development (DCD), a charity that supports professional dancers transitioning into a new career, from my dance background and had a conversation with their then Director about their coaching culture and how to get more involved when I first completed my coaching course. I soon learnt that they had plans to extend their geographical remit and were recruiting more coaches. The timing was rubbish, but the opportunity was perfect – it was a unique opportunity to combine both of my interests and passions. I went for it. I got one of the 3 self-employed roles. And they were prepared to wait for me to begin. I was overjoyed. It didn’t provide much work (only a day every 6 weeks) but that suited me as my baby’s first year required lots of hospital appointments as he was born with a condition and it was like wearing a label that I was good enough, I could do it – and my choice to leave my safe world of employment was justified. And it was this contract, during Covid, that sustained us as the charity got funding to support professional dancers whilst theatres and companies were closed, and many had coaching to support them during the uncertain times. It was a juggle with homeschooling, living in temporary accommodation (we were mid house extension and building work couldn’t continue with the kids there during the daytime), and with my husband being incredibly busy as a key worker but we just about got by. Noone would ever know that my desk was a fold up ironing board in the tidiest corner of someone else’s house! Thankfully I’m pretty good at compartmentalising!

I’ve always been driven by making a positive social impact. One of my earlier memories is of creating and performing a song and dance in my school assembly to raise awareness of the famine in Ethiopia. It was truly awful, but it was memorable, so I guess it did the job in part! More seriously, my work in the arts had a big focus on working with and for marginalised communities, including refugees and asylum seekers, looked after children, people with disabilities and others. I believe in the transformative power of the arts to process and communicate stories and reflect the world we live in. Dance certainly helped me when going through challenging times as a child; my family had experience of homelessness which taught me a lot about advocacy and resilience.

My interest in social impact had a big part to play in my ambition to provide coaching services for Young Women’s Trust (YWT), a feminist organisation working to achieve economic justice for young women. Their Work it Out programme provides one-to-one coaching to woman aged 18-30 using a Solutions Focused approach. This appealed to me because of the real breadth of topics brought to coaching by an incredibly diverse range of young women – and because I am driven to make coaching as accessible as possible. Many of these young women could never afford to pay for sessions themselves and really benefit from the experience. It took me three applications to get an interview and, thankfully, when I did my passion shone through! This work has allowed me to live my values and expand my skills – and gain enough hours to gain my ICF credential, another rewarding and self-affirming experience.

Both “associate” contracts provide me with a sense of belonging as, although we all work remotely, I am one of a team of coaches for both charities (4 for DCD and around 20 for YWT), most of whom are fantastically experienced and generous in sharing their knowledge and expertise and have similar values.

Other connections have also been instrumental in sustaining my career as a coach. I am incredibly grateful to live in the West Midlands where there are active co-coaching groups and networks, such as Coaching Central. These have massively expanded both my knowledge and repertoire and are well worth the small investment of time and financial resources. And I’ve just joined the fantastic community of Better Bolder Braver too, to support me with marketing.

This leads me to now. I realise I’ve been shying away from putting myself out there. I’ve had the trademark of “Pivotal Thinking” for a few years and not really done anything with it. And now I plan to! I want to change my business model and re-balance things, building my private practice and doing more work with organisations.

Ten years on from Arts Council England grant and I’ve just been successful in getting another grant to help me move forward thanks to the West Midlands Combined Authority’s Activate Skills Development Grant for people working in arts and culture in the West Midlands (part of the Commonwealth Games legacy funding). I’ll be doing a few different things, including some courses related to team coaching, organisational development, governance and marketing – and some networking too. It’s going to be a busy couple of months but I’m sure it’ll be worth it!

I’m excited about what might happen next. Watch this space!