My background is atypical for a psychotherapist in that my early years were spent in the corporate world. I advanced to the Vice Presidential level in Human Resources, where I was afforded the opportunity to acquire my MBA at the Richard Ivey School of Business. My corporate experience has turned out to be helpful for many of my clients, because I understand the corporate context, and the qualities one needs to hone in order to advance.

In 1996 I made the decision to devote my career to working with people one-on-one, and to ultimately provide that which had made the most profound difference in my own life – the practice of depth, or psychodynamic, psychotherapy.

While I was completing the program at the Centre for Training in Psychotherapy to become a depth therapist, I pursued a coaching career, and was mentored by an American psychologist and leadership coach, just as coaching was coming on the scene. I specialized in working with leaders who had issues with their interpersonal style, and was able to incorporate some of what I was learning in depth therapy into my work. I also co-created the first telephone coaching program for a leading EAP provider, and had the opportunity to coach hundreds of people across Canada who were experiencing all kinds of struggles and life situations. It was during this time that I acquired brief therapy skills such as CBT and REBT. Additionally, I had the privilege of leading a journaling workshop for eight years at Wellspring, a centre for cancer patients and their families.

I have been seeing therapy clients full-time since 2003, and I offer what I think of as an integrated approach, making use of all my training to provide what I feel would be most helpful to a client at a given point in time. Because depth therapy is a little less familiar to many, I have written about it in How I Work.