Susan trained originally as a professional nurse and midwife. After marrying her husband, Phil, an exploration geologist, she completed a BA degree in History, Biblical Studies, and English, working part time from home as an editor while her children were small. In 2016, Susan completed a one-year Diploma in Executive Coaching through Multiplex Partners, and has worked as an executive coach since then.

During a visit to Sydney in 2018, Susan was introduced to Christian Van Nieuwerburgh through Growth Coaching International. Inspired by this conversation, she organised the first open-enrolment Fundamentals in Coaching course for 35 senior educators in South Africa in 2020, and since then has continued to facilitate the introduction of coaching in education to several independent schools in South Africa. Susan is passionate about the capacity of coaching in education to support positive dialogue and transformation in educational communities in Australia and South Africa.

Susan is particularly interested in the use of words to transform and grow people. Due to her diverse career, including being raised in South Africa in a family who were actively anti-Apartheid, Susan has encountered numerous different cultures and ways of being, which have influenced her and from which she continues to derive much value. Susan has a passion for comprehensively understanding the facilitation of transformation, healing and growth. She works to facilitate a life-long process of ‘include, transform, include, transform’. This allows for the acquisition of knowledge AND its practical application; to know more AND to be more. Susan focuses on being present and listening actively while using a framework and key coaching skills to raise the client’s self-awareness and sense of personal agency. She is particularly interested in the integration of opposites. Susan works collaboratively with clients as they navigate their way to improved self-understanding and consequent positive behavioural change, which they can then implement in the workplace in an authentic and original way.

Susan draws on insights and wisdom from various coaching models, her professional medical background, Gestalt psychotherapy, Franciscan thought, emotional agility, competencies and levels of work.

Susan works independently as well as a Senior Consultant for Growth Coaching International, and is registered with the EMCC as a Senior Practitioner.