About Me
I was born in 1969 and grew up in Wales (United Kingdom), before moving to England in my early twenties with my wife, who I have been with since the age of 16. We settled here and had our family. I enjoy walking, travelling, film and sport.
I spent thirty years of my working life in both Primary and Secondary education. My roles included teacher, Head of Department, Head of Sixth Form/Upper School, Leader for Training and Development, Coaching and Mentoring Lead, Professional Tutor (responsibility for all newly qualified teachers and trainee teachers), Headteacher and Executive Headteacher (line managing ten Head Teachers). I was in this role when I became ill with CFS/ME and FND in late December 2021.​
It is important that I feel that you are in the right place to be coached, but you also need to be confident that I am the right person to be coaching you.
All of the above roles have prepared me well for coaching and supporting people with CFS and other related illnesses. Whether working with individuals, groups of pupils, Teachers or Headteachers, my career has been focussed on getting the best out of each person and supporting them to achieve their goals. I have always been someone that gets a lot of pleasure out of supporting others and watching them make progress over time. My whole career in education was about trying to get the best out of each child and adult that I worked with.
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When I was bed-bound and on my darkest days, I made a promise to my family and myself that if I ever recovered from CFS that I would not return to my previous job, but I would spend the rest of my working life supporting people with these conditions. At times it seemed more like a distant dream than a real possibility, but I was determined to give it my best shot.
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In the early days of the illness I was desperate to find answers to the three key questions I had. Why did I become ill? What was going on in my body? and what did I need to do to get better? However, the information I was receiving was just adding more stress. It was inconsistent, often confusing, contradictory and sometimes plain offensive! As I started to research I quickly began to establish patterns and trends and realised that the knowledge that I was acquiring was going to be really useful. I shared my ideas and theories with friends and others that were experiencing similar illnesses and I was getting a consistent message back; that my ideas could help a lot of other people.
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This then led to me to develop my RESTAND Framework which I use with all clients.​​​​