i ran the same pattern for ten years in completely different jobs.

pr. marketing. category management at Reebok. coding. teaching at a coding school. DevRel. ecosystem work in crypto. each role looked nothing like the last. the pattern underneath was identical.

learn fast. overdeliver. become the reliable one. take on more than i should. mother the people around me. neglect myself. hit the wall. leave. start again somewhere new and assume the new thing would be different.

it was never different. the pattern travelled with me. the job was never the problem.

three moments that show what i mean.

scene one - the bread roll

i was 24, managing the biggest revenue-driving product category at Reebok across central eastern europe - seven countries. the night before six hours of client presentations, i got a stomach bug. i was lying on the floor of the showroom between meetings, no energy to stand. a friend brought me a bread roll and electrolytes.

that bread roll was the best thing i'd ever tasted. not because of the bread. because for the first time in years, i was actually present. not chasing. not delivering. not performing. just being.

i didn't know it then, but that was the first signal. the body was telling me the only way it could - by stopping me completely.

scene two - the gym

a few years later. new city, new job. the job changed. the pattern hadn't.

long hours at work, then 3.5 hours at the gym - calisthenics, then muay thai. people joked i lived in the gym. i wasn't sleeping. i couldn't. my body was still on, still going, even when i was exhausted. i called it discipline. i called it commitment.

what it actually was: the same performance pattern, now running through my body too. the hormonal issues came. the gut issues came. the stress cycle that wouldn't close.

scene three - the coding school

by the time i was teaching at a coding bootcamp, i genuinely loved the work. people-driven, education, supporting others. everything i cared about. i should have been fine.

i wasn't. three months in, i was asked to launch a data science programme with no data science background. i said yes. i taught myself. i launched it in three months almost entirely alone - not because help wasn't available, but because i never asked. pride disguised as competence. people-pleasing on steroids.

that was when i understood: the pattern wasn't about whether i liked the job. it was about how i was wired to do any job. changing the work would never fix it. the work was changing me.

why i do this work.

a few years later, i was working in a small team during the biggest crisis the industry had seen. 100-hour weeks. working through the night. always on alert.

in the middle of it, i started running short body-based resets for the team - breathwork, alternate nostril breathing, simple grounding practices. ten, fifteen minutes at a time. most days, that was the only pause anyone took.

months later - sometimes a year later - colleagues kept coming back to me. they told me those sessions were what got them through the most challenging professional time of their lives. not the strategy. not the project management. the breathing.

that was the moment coaching stopped being a side interest and became the work.

it showed me something i'd been circling for years: the body is the biggest tool and the most loyal supporter we have. and we spend our entire lives muting it and trying to outthink our problems instead.

there's a second piece. around the same time, i started coaching founders in the ecosystem. and i noticed something i'd already seen with the teachers i trained at the coding school: when i stopped giving advice and started asking better questions, people unlocked growth i'd never seen them reach when they were being told what to do.

i'm not your expert. i'm the co-pilot who asks the right questions until you find your own answer - and then helps you make it real in your body so it doesn't dissolve by Tuesday.

that's the work. that's why i do it.

what i do now.

i work with high-performing women who already know something has to change. i run 1:1 coaching, camps, and workshops. i'm building an online programme for women who want to do this work in a group container.

i'm based in the Algarve. i work with women everywhere.

i do not tell clients what to do. i do not have a framework that promises a specific outcome by a specific date. i work somatically and strategically, in the same conversation, because the patterns you can't think your way out of are the ones living in your body - and the body-based shifts that don't connect to how you actually live get lost by the weekend.

if that resonates, the work might be for you. if you're looking for someone to give you the answer - it isn't.

training and credentials.

ICF ACC certified (associate certified coach, January 2026).

women empowerment & embodied transformation coaching certification - the embodied coaching institute (70 ICF & IPHM accredited training hours, 10 hours of ICF mentoring, September 2025).

i work in the co-active coaching tradition. i haven't pursued the formal CTI certification, but the philosophy - client in the driver's seat, coach as co-pilot, agenda set by the client not the coach - underpins everything i do.

outside the work.

zuz by a window with coffee, looking out at the morning light

i live in the Algarve with my dog. i do trail runs on the weekends with friends. i dance salsa. sometimes i take my small camper van into nature for a couple of days - no plan, no agenda, no wi-fi.

i'm not telling you this to perform a lifestyle. i'm telling you because the work i do is the work i had to do on myself first. the capacity i help women reclaim is the capacity i built back in my own life, slowly, after almost losing it.

i'm not on the other side of this. i'm still walking the path. i'm just a bit further along than you are right now.

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