I am a communications professional who has taught and coached writing for almost 30 years in various academic and professional settings. Most recently, I have been teaching, designing, and managing a variety of academic and professional writing courses at Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia.

I maintain an active individual coaching practice – both in-person and online – with a wide variety of people across Canada. Over the years,  I have coached people through major academic writing projects at Royal Roads University, University of Victoria, University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, as well as a number of other schools in fields as diverse as history, mechanical engineering, foreign language instruction, ecopsychology, leadership, disaster and emergency management, and business. In the professional realm, I have coached new employees through effective report writing at WorkSafe BC.

I began my work in teaching and coaching writing as an undergraduate at Oberlin College where I worked in the writing centre and as a tutor for an intensive writing course. And I continued on to teach academic writing though the English department at the University of Wisconsin – Madison while completing my M.A. in Comparative Literature. While a Ph.D. student in Rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon University,  I taught academic, professional, and technical writing, as well as writing for statistics. I also studied issues in writing and composition with Drs. Stuart Green, Deborah Brandt, Marty Nystrand at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and with Drs. Linda Flower, John Hayes, and Christine Neuwirth at Carnegie Mellon University.

When taking a break from academics, I have worked as a book production assistant, a qualitative researcher, a software implementation specialist, a knowledge management associate, and a website content editor. I also love to bike, practice yoga, read novels, follow current events, and enjoy the sunshine at the beach.

I currently live in Victoria, BC with my fantastic husband, my wonderful son, and Blixa, an extremely energetic labradoodle.