Tell us about yourself
I’m a certified change manager operating in an unusual kind of way. After using mindfulness and meditation to build my own resiliency through cancer, in 2011 I began running meditation classes at my place of work, Pacific Blue Cross.
After experimenting on how change management techniques could be integrated with meditation to build change resiliency, a series of chain reactions resulted in the creation of my own business. I now train and certify passionate meditators to become mindfulness meditation facilitators in their workplaces or communities, and help organizations implement self-sustaining mindfulness program.
Earlier this year, I left Pacific Blue Cross and now exclusively run The Calm Monkey, living my life’s purpose and still including change management in my everyday work.
How did you get into Change Management?
I think I may have been the first person in Vancouver who had the official title of ‘Change Manager’ in 2007! It certainly wasn’t a well understood job title at that time, but my background in human resources, information technology and organizational development gave me the perfect background to become a change manager.
In 2010, I founded the Vancouver Change Management Practitioners community of practice group, which rolled into the current ACMP Vancouver chapter we know today.
What are you working on?
ACMP Global has been an amazing catapult for my career. They selected my white paper as the top winning paper of 2015, and have invited me to speak three times and again I will speak at their 2017 conference in New Orleans.
A chain reaction of events found me teaching and speaking at the Greater Good Science Center of UC Berkeley, and currently I am working with Google and Health Department of Cincinnati, and a number other organizations local and worldwide. I train individuals and organizations and am building up a community of practice of meditation facilitators worldwide.
My goal is to continue reaching as many people as possible by training others to become facilitators with the vision of “Creating a more mindful world, together”.
Do you have any recommended change management books / resources to share?
My white paper Meditation – a Powerful Change Management Tool shows the impact of workplace meditation. This is the paper that won as the Top Winning Paper of the 2015 global Change Management conference.
How do you like to spend your time outside of work?
I’m a little embarrassed to admit that these days my focus is solely on building The Calm Monkey. I thought that being an entrepreneur would be really hard work, and I unfortunately I was right! But I’ve never felt so energized in my whole life. What a beautiful surprise that change management and meditation became my new career.