For years, becoming a psychologist felt like the dream that kept slipping just out of reach.

Ironically, I only achieved it once I’d stopped chasing it.

That probably sounds like one of those motivational quotes shared over pictures of mountains and sunsets, but in my case it’s true.

When I first went to university, I studied Psychology and Criminology. Unfortunately, my degree wasn’t accredited by the British Psychological Society, which meant that becoming a Chartered Psychologist wasn’t the straightforward path I’d imagined.

Back then, the message was clear.

Clinical psychology was fiercely competitive.

People with perfect grades got those places.

People like me didn’t.

So, I quietly filed the dream away and got on with life.

I worked as a Childcare Development Officer, helping secure funding to create childcare provision across Oxfordshire. It felt like my first proper career. I enjoyed it, even though I still had no idea where life was taking me.

Then I did what seemed entirely logical to my twenty-something self.

I quit my job and flew to Australia on my own.

I didn’t have much money, a plan or any idea. what I wanted to do with my life.

Looking back, this turned out to be excellent preparation for adulthood, which, as far as I can tell, mostly involves making things up as you go along.

Somehow, I’ve always trusted that I’d figure things out along the way.

That philosophy has served me surprisingly well.

It has also landed me in some spectacularly questionable situations.

One of those involved an American man whose story deserves an entire blog of its own. Suffice to say, the relationship became abusive and was followed by years of stalking and harassment.

When I eventually returned to the UK, something shifted.

I realised I still wanted to become a psychologist.

So I went back.

I completed my psychology conversion course, gained Graduate Membership of the British Psychological Society, and secured a role facilitating treatment programmes within the prison service.

I genuinely thought I’d finally found my path.

Life disagreed.

During training I openly disclosed the abuse and ongoing stalking I’d experienced. Rather than exploring how I was coping or assessing my wellbeing properly, the decision was simply made that it was “too soon” for me to undertake the role.

I failed the training.

Because passing the training was a condition of employment, I lost my job.

Looking back, that moment felt devastating.

It also effectively ended my hopes of becoming a psychologist.

Or so I thought.

Apparently Life had looked at my carefully constructed five-year plan and thought, “That’s adorable.”.

Instead, I found myself working across youth justice, community safety, safeguarding, domestic abuse and later policy. I trained as a psychotherapeutic counsellor. I supported children, families, offenders and frontline professionals.

Each role made perfect sense.

Only much later.

A career coach eventually asked me a simple question.

What did I actually want?

The answer surprised me.

I wanted to be a psychologist.

So once again I started rebuilding.

As I was working with a policy role at the time, I deliberately sought frontline experience, became an Assistant Psychologist within CAMHS, and later helped establish a neurodevelopmental service from the ground up.

I loved that work.

I finally felt as though I belonged.

I applied three times to get onto the funded Clinical Psychology doctorate programme, which you can only do once a year.

Year after year I was rejected before interview.

Anyone who has been through that application process knows how emotionally draining it can become. One application every year. Endless competency forms. Selection processes that somehow manage to reduce years of experience into a few hundred carefully crafted words.

I knew I was capable.

I simply never seemed to fit the mould.

Then everything changed.

In 2019 I was diagnosed with eye cancer.

Suddenly my career plans seemed far less important than simply staying alive.

Recovery forced me to stop pushing.

It also forced me to ask different questions.

By then my children were older.

Would I really uproot the whole family if I finally got onto a doctorate hundreds of miles away?

Would I even want to?

I briefly considered funding a Counselling Psychology doctorate myself.

I interviewed well.

Then I was told that it was too soon after my cancer diagnosis, but they would welcome me to join the following year.

At the time it felt like another closed door, and I genuinely believed Life was trying to tell me something.

Perhaps I simply wasn’t meant to become a psychologist.

So I let go.

And strangely, that changed everything.

On an impulse, I enrolled on a Master’s in Coaching and Mentoring.

It remains one of the best impulsive decisions I’ve ever made.

Then came COVID.

A close friend died unexpectedly.

I began a PhD.

A few months later my husband was diagnosed with Young Onset Alzheimer’s disease.

Within months we had sold our house, moved across the country, and overnight I became the family’s primary earner while raising two children, caring for my husband, building a business and attempting to complete a PhD.

It wasn’t exactly the five-year career plan I’d imagined.

Somewhere within all of that, coaching quietly stopped being something I did.

It became who I was.

Not because it was easier than psychology.

Because it allowed me to integrate everything I’d lived.

The psychology.

The counselling.

The justice work.

The neurodiversity.

The existential questions.

The grief.

The uncertainty.

The humanity.

Then something unexpected happened.

The British Psychological Society introduced a route to Chartered Coaching Psychologist.

The dream I’d abandoned years earlier quietly reappeared.

This time it wasn’t asking me to become someone else.

It recognised the psychologist I had already become.

First I had to finish my Master’s.

I suspended my PhD, completed my dissertation and graduated with a Merit.

Years ago that result might have disappointed me.

Now it represented something much more important.

Compassion.

There are seasons in life when excellence means accepting that “good enough” really is good enough.

Then came the chartership portfolio.

It wasn’t simply an assessment.

It was a chance to realise I’d already become the psychologist I’d spent twenty years trying to be.

And it’s part of a much longer and winding journey.

The little girl who struggled to read.

The student who thought she wasn’t clever enough.

The woman who repeatedly believed she’d missed her chance.

It turns out life wasn’t repeatedly telling me “no.”

It was saying, “Not that psychologist.” With a massive eye roll.

I’m finally learning to let go of trying to control the plot.

It’s a futile exercise anyway.

Life seems to prefer improvisation and so do I.

Rather than trying to enforce a script on Life, I embrace it. In all’s its misery and joy, the ups and the downs. The trick is not to take life too seriously, have more fun and play with improvisation.

Sometimes you spend years chasing one version of success, only to discover life has quietly been leading you towards something that fits you far better. Chartership doesn’t feel like the end of the story. It feels like confirmation that I’ve been on the right path all along.

It’s simply another chapter.

One I never expected to write.

And perhaps that’s the greatest lesson of all.

Sometimes the path you spend years trying to force open isn’t actually your path.

Sometimes life closes the door because there is another one waiting around the corner.

One that fits who you’ve become, not who you thought you were supposed to be.

A couple of months ago, I had the pleasure of presenting at the Welsh Centre for Crime and Social Justice (WCCSJ) 2026 Conference at Wrexham University. It was two days packed with thought-provoking research, challenging conversations, and a reminder of just how broad the field of crime and social justice has become.

As is always the case with conferences, there were far more presentations than any one person could attend. I inevitably found myself experiencing the familiar academic dilemma of wishing I could be in more than one place at once.

Some presentations that particularly stood out included:

• Professor Martina Feilzer (Bangor University) – The Use of AI Technologies in Criminal Justice
• Alexandra Dobson – Corporate Liability and the Search for Senior Management
• Dr Tegan Brierley-Sollis – Indirect Trauma through an Attachment Lens: Working with Justice-Involved Children
• Edwin Duggan – Danielle’s Law: Addressing the ‘Duty to Assist’ Gap in UK Criminal Law
• Katrina Jones – Framing Positionality and Ethical Practice Using Reflexivity in Youth Justice Research
• Akrivi-Marina Roumpou (Aberystwyth University)– Police Voluntary Interviews with Children in Wales: Barriers in Independent Research
• Ali Abbawi (Bangor University) – Legal Frameworks for Combating Financial Crimes Involving Cryptocurrencies in Iraq

The range of topics reflected the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of criminal and social justice research. From artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency crime to attachment theory, youth justice, policing and legal reform, the conference highlighted how contemporary justice issues rarely sit neatly within a single discipline.

One panel discussion that particularly resonated with me was from Amanda Blakeman KPM, whose reflections on the future of policing echoed many of the themes emerging across the conference. She argued that modern policing is increasingly concerned with complex and often invisible forms of harm, including cybercrime, online abuse, coercive control and domestic abuse, that demand different skills, different technologies and, perhaps most importantly, different ways of thinking. She also reflected on the progress of women in policing and the wider structural changes needed to meet these evolving challenges.

I was also delighted to present my own paper:

Responding to Digital Harm: Capacity, Credibility, and Criminal Justice in an AI Age

The presentation explored how online harms are frequently normalised, minimised and misunderstood through the language we use, the assumptions we make about victims and perpetrators, and the institutional frameworks through which digital harms are investigated. Drawing on my own experiences alongside my doctoral research into online discourse and neutralisation techniques, I argued that many of the methodological challenges researchers encounter when studying social media- questions of credibility, evidence, platform instability, algorithmic influence and context- are remarkably similar to those now facing policing and criminal justice agencies.

As artificial intelligence continues to reshape both offending and investigation, I suggest that effective responses to digital harm will require more than technological innovation. They will also require us to critically examine the psychological, cultural and institutional assumptions that shape how credibility is constructed, how victims are believed, and how justice is delivered in increasingly digital environments.

If you would like to watch the presentation, the recording is available here:

Responding to Digital Harm: Capacity, Credibility, and Criminal Justice in an AI Age

My thanks to the Welsh Centre for Crime and Social Justice, Wrexham University, the organisers, presenters and everyone who contributed to two days of thoughtful discussion. Conferences like these remind me how valuable interdisciplinary conversations are. The challenges facing society rarely arrive in disciplinary boxes, and our research is stronger when we are willing to learn from one another.

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I had the privilege of attending a celebration at Westminster marking the 10th Anniversary of Children Heard and Seen. It was a wonderful opportunity to reflect on how far the charity has come and the incredible impact it continues to have on the lives of children and families affected by parental imprisonment.

The evening was also deeply personal.

I was incredibly touched to receive a letter from the charity’s Founder and CEO, Sarah Burrows, recognising my contribution to helping establish the organisation over a decade ago. Looking back, it is hard to believe how much has grown from those early conversations and the determination of a small group of people who believed these children deserved to be seen, heard, and supported.

In 2013, I was instrumental in helping establish Children Heard and Seen following its initial crowdfunding campaign. I worked alongside the founding team to develop the charity’s business plan, governance, and policies, helping secure charitable status and laying the foundations for what would become one of the UK’s leading charities supporting children with a parent in prison. During its first year, I served as both Trustee and Company Secretary, helping guide the organisation through its formative stages.

In 2019, Children Heard and Seen was awarded the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, the highest honour bestowed upon volunteer groups in the United Kingdom and often described as the equivalent of an MBE for voluntary organisations. The award recognised the charity’s outstanding work in reducing the stigma, isolation, and disadvantage experienced by children affected by parental imprisonment.

Being part of the founding team meant that I also had the honour of receiving my second Queen’s Award for Volunteering, a recognition that remains one of the proudest moments of my voluntary career. However, the greatest achievement has never been the award itself. It has been seeing thousands of children receive the support, encouragement, and opportunities they deserve.

Why Children Heard and Seen Exists

Children with a parent in prison are among the most overlooked groups in society. They often experience profound loss, uncertainty, financial hardship, disrupted family relationships, bullying, and social stigma. Despite having committed no offence themselves, many carry an invisible burden that can affect every aspect of their lives.

Without the right support, these children face an increased risk of poorer educational outcomes, mental health difficulties, victimisation, and, for some, future involvement with the criminal justice system. Early intervention can make an enormous difference, helping children develop resilience, build positive relationships, and imagine futures beyond the circumstances into which they were born.

This work also connects closely with my more recent research interests.

Research increasingly demonstrates that neuro differences such as ADHD and autism are overrepresented within the criminal justice system. Too often, unmet needs, misunderstanding, and systemic barriers contribute to pathways into offending rather than timely support. These neuro differences frequently run within families, meaning that many children affected by parental imprisonment may also be navigating their own neurodevelopmental needs while coping with trauma, loss, and social exclusion.

Supporting these children therefore requires more than compassion. It requires systems that recognise complexity, respond to individual needs, and seek to break cycles of disadvantage rather than reinforce them.

That is exactly what Children Heard and Seen has spent the past decade doing.

Looking back, I feel incredibly proud to have played a small part in helping create an organisation that continues to change lives every single day. Seeing the charity flourish over the past ten years has been both humbling and inspiring, and I remain enormously grateful to everyone who has dedicated their time, expertise, and compassion to making its vision a reality.

Congratulations to Sarah Burrows, the staff, volunteers, trustees, mentors, supporters, and, most importantly, the remarkable children and families whose courage continues to inspire us all.

Sometimes the greatest privilege is not being recognised for the work you did, but seeing the difference that work continues to make many years later.

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In March 2025, I had the privilege of delivering a webinar for the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) Neurodiversity Special Interest Group, exploring a topic that I believe sits at the heart of inclusive coaching practice: how ableism quietly shapes coaching, and what we can do about it.

Coaching is often described as a profession that empowers people to reach their potential. Yet coaching does not exist in isolation from society. Like every helping profession, it is influenced by the cultural values, assumptions, and biases that surround it.

One of those influences is ableism.

Ableism is more than overt discrimination. It is a system of beliefs, practices, and structures that privilege certain ways of thinking, communicating, behaving, and working while marginalising others. It shapes workplaces, education, healthcare, leadership, and our understanding of what success looks like. It also influences coaching, often in subtle ways that even experienced practitioners may not recognise.

During the webinar, we explored three interconnected forms of ableism.

Structural ableism is embedded within organisational systems, policies, and environments.

Interpersonal ableism appears through everyday assumptions, language, and interactions.

Internalised ableism develops when individuals absorb societal messages that tell them they are somehow deficient, leading to shame, self-doubt, and reluctance to ask for support.

For coaches, recognising these dynamics is essential because our practice can unintentionally reinforce them.

Many traditional coaching models are built upon assumptions of consistent productivity, linear progress, individual responsibility, and the belief that success comes primarily through changing the individual. While these approaches can be valuable, they may also overlook the realities of fluctuating energy, executive functioning differences, sensory needs, chronic health conditions, and inaccessible environments.

When this happens, coaching can inadvertently communicate that the client is the problem rather than questioning whether the system itself requires adaptation.

Throughout the session, we examined practical examples of how ableism can appear within coaching conversations.

For example, encouraging an autistic client to communicate in a more “professional” or “warmer” way may seem helpful on the surface. Yet if this advice reinforces masking over authenticity, coaching risks validating neurotypical communication styles as the standard by which all others are judged.

Similarly, traditional goal-setting approaches often assume predictable progress and consistent executive functioning. For many neurodifferent clients, progress is rarely linear. Flexible, process-focused approaches can be far more effective than rigid outcome-driven frameworks.

These examples prompted rich discussion about the assumptions many of us have inherited as coaches—not because we intended harm, but because these assumptions are deeply embedded within society itself.

Rather than leaving participants with theory alone, the webinar focused on practical changes coaches can begin making immediately.

We explored how to create anti-ableist coaching spaces through accessible communication, flexibility around energy and executive functioning, recognising the impact of masking, considering intersectionality, and balancing challenge with appropriate accommodation. We also discussed the importance of reflective supervision, reflexive journalling, and continuing professional development as ways of recognising our own unconscious assumptions and continually developing our practice.

Perhaps the most important message from the session was that anti-ableist coaching is not about lowering expectations or avoiding challenge. It is about ensuring that challenge is meaningful, equitable, and grounded in each client’s reality rather than society’s assumptions.

Ultimately, coaching has the potential to become much more than a process of helping people adapt to environments that exclude them. It can become a practice that empowers individuals while also encouraging organisations, leaders, and society to rethink the norms that create exclusion in the first place.

Breaking barriers begins with recognising them.

I am incredibly grateful to the EMCC Neurodiversity Special Interest Group for the opportunity to facilitate this discussion and to everyone who attended and contributed such thoughtful reflections. The willingness of coaches to critically examine their own practice gives me great hope for the future of coaching psychology and the coaching profession more broadly.

Real inclusion is not achieved by helping people become more like everyone else. It begins when we create coaching spaces where diverse ways of thinking, feeling, communicating, and being are recognised as valuable expressions of our shared humanity.

In April 2025, I had the privilege of presenting my research at the 83rd International Council of Psychologists Conference at Erasmus University College in Rotterdam. The conference theme centred on human rights, dignity, social inclusion, and justice, providing a powerful context in which to discuss the role coaching psychology can play in challenging institutional ableism.

My poster presentation, “Breaking Barriers: Addressing Institutional Ableism Through Coaching Psychology for Autistic Women,” drew upon my Master’s research exploring autistic women’s experiences of workplace coaching. While workplace coaching is increasingly recognised as an important intervention for supporting autistic employees, very little research has explored how autistic women themselves experience this process.

My research sought to address that gap.

Through a phenomenological approach, participants shared rich accounts of navigating workplaces that were often shaped by neurotypical assumptions about communication, professionalism, productivity, and success. Their experiences highlighted not only the personal challenges they faced but also the structural barriers embedded within organisational cultures.

Three overarching themes emerged from the research:

• The lived experience of autism in the workplace.
• The need for genuinely autism-inclusive organisational cultures.
• The importance of recognising intersectionality when understanding people’s experiences.

Collectively, these findings pointed towards a broader conclusion: many of the challenges experienced by autistic women do not arise from autism itself, but from institutional ableism embedded within systems, policies, and cultural expectations.

This has important implications for coaching psychology.

Rather than viewing coaching solely as a means of helping individuals adapt to their environment, coaching can also provide a space to question the assumptions that shape those environments. It can help individuals develop self-understanding and confidence while simultaneously encouraging organisations to reflect on their own practices, cultures, and definitions of success.

Coaching psychology therefore has the potential to become more than an individual intervention. It can become a catalyst for organisational learning, cultural change, and social justice.

Presenting this work within an international conference dedicated to human rights brought a new perspective to my own thinking. Across three days, psychologists from around the world shared research and lived experiences addressing climate change, war, genocide, migration, gender-based violence, forced marriage, systemic oppression, and social exclusion.

Although these topics differed significantly from my own research, a common thread connected them all: the recognition that psychology cannot remain isolated from the social and political contexts in which people live. Whether addressing discrimination, conflict, exclusion, or inequality, psychology has a responsibility not only to understand suffering but also to contribute to reducing it.

Several keynote speakers left a lasting impression. Professor Saths Cooper’s reminder that how we treat the most marginalised members of society says more about us than it does about them resonated deeply with the themes emerging from my own research. Equally powerful were Professor Halleh Ghorashi’s reflections on epistemic justice, identity, and the importance of ensuring that those whose voices have historically been overlooked are recognised as legitimate producers of knowledge.

Those conversations reinforced my growing belief that coaching psychology has an important role to play within wider movements for equity and inclusion. Coaching is not simply about helping people perform better within existing systems. It can also help expose the assumptions those systems are built upon and support the creation of environments in which diverse ways of thinking, communicating, and existing are genuinely valued.

Presenting this research internationally was a privilege, but it also strengthened my conviction that coaching psychology has the potential to become a discipline that actively contributes to social change. By listening carefully to lived experience, questioning deficit-based narratives, and challenging institutional ableism, coaching psychology can help create workplaces and communities where neuro differences are recognised not as exceptions to accommodate, but as valuable expressions of human diversity.

I remain incredibly grateful to everyone who contributed to the research, attended the poster discussion, and engaged in thoughtful conversations throughout the conference. The experience reinforced my commitment to developing coaching psychology as a discipline that places dignity, justice, and inclusion at the centre of practice.

What if coaching psychology became more than a profession focused on helping individuals achieve personal goals? What if it also became a catalyst for challenging the systems that shape those goals in the first place?

These were the questions at the heart of my presentation, “Coaching Psychology as Social Activism: Redefining Inclusion Beyond Neurotypical Ableism,” delivered at the 2025 British Psychological Society Division of Coaching Psychology Conference.

Coaching psychology has traditionally focused on supporting individual growth, performance, wellbeing, and achievement. While these aims remain important, they often sit within broader societal narratives that privilege independence, productivity, resilience, and continual self-improvement. These values, heavily influenced by neoliberal thinking, can unintentionally reinforce the idea that success depends solely upon an individual’s ability to adapt, regardless of the barriers created by the environments in which they live and work.

For many people with neuro differences, these barriers are not incidental—they are systemic.

Ableism continues to shape our workplaces, education systems, healthcare services, and wider society. It influences how intelligence, competence, professionalism, communication, and success are defined. It also affects how individuals come to understand themselves, often leading to internalised ableism, where societal messages of deficit become woven into identity and self-worth.

If coaching psychology seeks to empower individuals, then it must also be willing to examine the assumptions upon which its own practices are built.

Drawing upon my Master’s research exploring autistic women’s experiences of workplace coaching, I argued that coaching psychology has the opportunity to move beyond helping people adapt to existing systems. Instead, it can become a discipline that actively questions those systems, challenges deficit-based narratives, and contributes to creating environments where diverse ways of thinking, communicating, and existing are genuinely recognised as valuable.

This requires a shift in perspective.

Rather than asking, “How can we help this individual succeed within the current system?”, we might also ask:

• What assumptions are shaping our understanding of success?
• Whose needs were these systems designed to serve?
• What strengths remain invisible because they fall outside neurotypical expectations?
• How can coaching contribute to changing organisations and institutions, rather than simply changing the individual?

The presentation explored how coaching psychology can draw upon ideas from disability justice, social psychology, critical psychology, and systems thinking to broaden its understanding of inclusion. Inclusion should not mean helping people become more acceptable to existing structures. It should mean creating structures that value human diversity from the outset.

I also discussed practical ways coaches can begin embedding this perspective within their own practice. Reflexive supervision, critical reflection, adapted coaching models, and systemic case formulation all offer opportunities to recognise how power, identity, culture, and organisational contexts shape the coaching relationship. These approaches move coaching away from reactive accommodation towards proactive inclusion.

Ultimately, I believe coaching psychology has the potential to become a powerful form of social activism. Not activism through protest alone, but through the everyday conversations that shape how people understand themselves, how organisations define success, and how society responds to difference.

If coaching continues to focus solely on helping individuals fit into environments that exclude them, we risk reinforcing the very inequalities we seek to reduce. But if we embrace coaching as a vehicle for social justice, we can begin dismantling internalised ableism, influencing organisational culture, informing policy, and advocating for more equitable systems.

The future of coaching psychology lies not simply in developing individuals, but in transforming the contexts in which they live, learn, and work.

Because inclusion is not about accommodating people as exceptions. It is about recognising neuro differences as an ordinary, valuable, and essential part of human diversity.

I am incredibly grateful to everyone who attended the session and contributed to such thoughtful discussion. The enthusiasm and critical reflection shared during the presentation reinforced my belief that our profession is ready to have these conversations. I hope this marks the beginning of many more discussions about how coaching psychology can contribute not only to personal development, but to creating a more equitable and inclusive society for everyone.

I was honoured to receive the Best Roundtable Presentation Award at the 2025 Division of Coaching Psychology Conference for a session exploring a question that sits at the heart of my work:

What happens when coaching unintentionally reproduces the very barriers it seeks to help people overcome?

Coaching is often presented as a neutral process. We talk about goals, performance, resilience, productivity, growth, and success as though these concepts are universal and value-free. Yet every coaching conversation takes place within a broader social, cultural, and political context. The assumptions we hold about what constitutes a “good life,” meaningful progress, or successful functioning are rarely neutral. They are shaped by dominant societal narratives.

One of those narratives is ableism.

Ableism refers to the privileging of certain ways of thinking, communicating, behaving, learning, working, and existing, while positioning other ways as deficient, problematic, or in need of correction. While overt forms of ableism are often recognised, more subtle forms can become embedded within professional practices, including coaching.

During the roundtable, participants explored a case example and engaged in reflexive discussion about how ableist assumptions can quietly shape coaching goals, interventions, and outcomes. Together, we considered questions such as:

• Who decides what “success” looks like?
• When does adaptation become pressure to conform?
• Are we helping clients flourish, or helping them fit into systems that were never designed for them?
• What assumptions sit beneath concepts such as productivity, motivation, communication, professionalism, and resilience?

These questions become particularly important when working with autistic individuals, people with ADHD, and other neurodifferent clients. Traditional coaching approaches often emphasise linear goal progression, behavioural modification, productivity enhancement, and performance optimisation. While these approaches can be helpful, they may also inadvertently reinforce the message that the client must change in order to be accepted.

Many neurodifferent individuals have spent years receiving explicit and implicit messages that they are “too much,” “not enough,” “too sensitive,” “too intense,” “too disorganised,” or simply wrong. Coaching that focuses solely on adaptation without questioning the systems that create these pressures risks reinforcing internalised ableism and further disconnecting individuals from their authentic ways of being.

The discussion also explored the potential for coaching psychology to become more than an individual change methodology. Coaching psychology has the capacity to act as a vehicle for social change by helping people critically examine the narratives that shape their identities, challenging deficit-based assumptions, and creating spaces where difference is not merely tolerated but genuinely valued.

This requires a shift from asking:

“How can this person function more effectively within the system?”

towards also asking:

“What aspects of the system need to change?”

Such an approach aligns with broader movements within psychology that recognise the importance of context, power, identity, and social justice. It invites coaches to move beyond individualistic explanations and to consider the wider structures that influence wellbeing, opportunity, and belonging.

The conversations that emerged during the session were thoughtful, courageous, and deeply encouraging. Participants shared reflections from their own practice, challenged assumptions, and explored what anti-ableist coaching might look like in action.

Receiving the award was a genuine honour, but the most meaningful aspect of the session was the collective willingness to engage with these complex questions. The discussion reinforced my belief that coaching psychology has an important role to play in creating a more inclusive future—one that recognises human diversity not as a problem to be solved, but as a valuable part of what it means to be human.

Thank you to everyone who attended, contributed, and helped create such a rich and reflective conversation. The work of challenging ableism is ongoing, and I look forward to continuing the dialogue together.

In 2025 I was awarded Best Roundtable Presentation by the British Psychological Society’s Division of Coaching Psychology.

The award was given for a roundtable discussion exploring how coaching psychology can be used to challenge systemic ableism and promote greater inclusion.

Receiving this recognition means a great deal to me because it reflects a topic that sits at the heart of my work. Throughout my career, I have been passionate about understanding how individuals are shaped by the systems, cultures, and environments around them, and how coaching psychology can contribute not only to personal growth but also to wider social change.

Much of my work has focused on neuro differences, inclusion, social justice, and creating spaces where people can thrive without feeling pressured to conform to norms that were never designed with them in mind. To see these conversations gaining traction within the profession is both encouraging and hopeful.

I am incredibly grateful to everyone who participated in the discussion, shared their perspectives, and helped create such a rich and thoughtful conversation. This award is a reminder of the power of collective dialogue and the importance of continuing to challenge assumptions, question inequities, and imagine more inclusive futures.

Thank you to the British Psychological Society Division of Coaching Psychology for this recognition. I look forward to continuing these conversations and contributing to a profession that is increasingly engaging with the wider social and systemic issues that affect people’s lives.