Hello & Welcome!

My Story

I often joke that I’ve been talking about emotions and social-emotional well-being long before they became common topics for dinner table conversations, social media posts, and friend group discussions. It’s exciting to witness a world where we are starting to recognize emotions and mental health as equally important as physical health. This is actually where my journey into social-emotional development began.

It feels like a lifetime ago that I was a high-performance athlete in TaeKwonDo, and before that playing high-level soccer. When I retired from competitive sports, I felt lost. For over two decades, sport had been my outlet. With that chapter behind me, I began reflecting on what to do with the emotions and thoughts I had carefully tucked away. During this time, I was also working in a field dedicated to supporting adaptive and inclusive sport. This exposure to experiential and outdoor education sparked a passion in me. I saw so much potential for change, self-awareness, empathy, kindness, and compassion — all things that continue to fuel my deep interest in social-emotional development.

Fast forward to my Master of Science in Education, where I explored how we can use literacy and experiential education (now known as social-emotional skills) to teach children empathy, adaptability, and address the rise in bullying. Having grown up in the Middle East and moving to Canada during middle school, I was all too familiar with how kids treat those they don’t understand. As an educator, I witnessed time and again that we are often unkind to people who are different from us — and at the core, we’re not always kind to ourselves.

My journey has ebbed and flowed, but at its core, I’ve always been an educator who sees kids differently — who thinks about their behaviour through a unique lens. I take the time to look past the surface of their actions to understand the “why” behind them. I’ve worked with all ages and stages in various capacities. As a preschool owner and facilitator, I developed the Language of Kindness Framework, a curriculum designed to foster empathy, build communication skills, and support emotional well-being in young children. As a parent consultant, I leveraged my years of experience supporting children in their early years to help support parents with raising kind, resilient, and curious kids using this framework. It was also in this role that I authored The Adventures of Team Brain, a children's book aimed at helping young learners understand emotional regulation, the stress cycle, and tools for social-emotional learning (SEL).

Pulling all these experiences together I am currently working on my Masters of Arts in Counselling Psychology so that I can support children, adolescents and families beyond the scope of education. Each step of my journey has helped to shape the person I am, providing me with unique perspectives and diverse experiences and I look forward to the next chapter.