ABOUT TERESA
PEOPLE. BEHAVIOUR.LEARNING. CHANGE.
I've spent much of my career trying to understand what helps people move forward.
Before ETCH, my career took me through technology and business, more than 23 years in education, teaching and senior leadership.
Different environments. Different job titles.
But looking back, there has been a remarkably consistent thread running through all of them:
People. Behaviour. Learning. Change.
I'm fascinated by the gap between knowing something and actually being able to do something with that knowledge.
Why can an intelligent, capable person know exactly what they need to do — and still feel stuck?
Why does one person thrive under pressure while another becomes overwhelmed?
Why can we lead, teach, support or advise everyone around us and still struggle to apply the same wisdom to ourselves?
Those questions sit at the heart of ETCH.
FROM TECH TO EDUCATION TO ETCH
I started my career in tech where, as a national senior leader I analysed, programmed and implemented solutions to problems.
Then, for more than 23 years, I worked in education, including ten years in senior leadership.
I taught. I led. I coached. I trained staff. I mentored and I worked with young people and families. I supported colleagues through difficult situations and organisational change. I worked with behaviour, safeguarding, wellbeing, inclusion and technology.
And I became increasingly interested not simply in what people do, or how they learn, but why they do it.
That curiosity led me deeper into coaching, behavioural change, neurodivergence, emotions, hypnosis, NLP and other approaches to understanding how people think, feel, respond and change.
Eventually, those three worlds came together.
ETCH was born from the idea that meaningful change rarely comes from simply giving somebody more information.
Sometimes we need insight.
Sometimes challenge.
Sometimes practical strategies.
Sometimes we need to understand what our nervous system, beliefs, habits or previous experiences are contributing.
And sometimes we need a completely different way of approaching the problem.
WHY ETCH?
Elevate Training, Coaching & Hypnosis.
Those three words originally described the different strands of my work.
Today, I think of them slightly differently.
They represent a toolkit:
Training helps us learn and understand.
Coaching helps us think, reflect and choose.
Therapeutic and behavioural-change approaches can help us work with the patterns that conscious thought alone doesn't always shift.
I don't believe people should have to diagnose themselves and then select the appropriate technique from a menu.
You bring me what you'd like to be different.
Together, we work out what might help.
I KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT CHANGE MYSELF
I don't believe a coach needs to have lived your life in order to support you.
And I won't pretend that my experiences mean I automatically understand yours.
But I do know what it is to experience change.
My own life has included career changes, leadership, raising a family, divorce, caring responsibilities, bereavement, significant health challenges and the strange process of working out what comes next when a version of life you knew changes.
I've also reinvented myself professionally more than once.
Those experiences don't make me the expert in your story.
They do mean I'm unlikely to be frightened by change, uncertainty or a complicated human being.
And I rather like complicated human beings.
QUALIFIED. EXPERIENCED. STILL CURIOUS.
I take professional development seriously.
My background and training span education, leadership, business, coaching, behavioural change, neurodivergence, emotional wellbeing and hypnotherapy.
I'm a qualified teacher and former school senior leader, a certified neurodivergent coach, certified emotions coach and trained hypnotherapist. I am also undertaking Level 7 development in senior and executive coaching.
My original degree is in Business Information Technology, reflecting another longstanding interest of mine: how people, organisations and technology interact.
I continue to develop my practice through professional training, research, supervision, reflection and ongoing learning.
I don't expect to ever be finished learning about people.
EXPERIENCE & PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND
Natonal IT Manager
23+ years in education
10 years in senior leadership
Qualified Teacher
Executive Coach & Behavioural Change Specialist
Level 7 Senior & Executive Coaching development
Certified Neurodivergent Coach
Certified Emotions Coach
Qualified Hypnotherapist
BSc Business Information Technology
Experienced trainer, facilitator and educator
Former Designated Safeguarding Lead
Former Designated Senior Mental Health Lead
Former Designated Teacher
Experience in behaviour, inclusion, safeguarding and pastoral leadership
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS & WIDER ROLES
My work is also informed by ongoing engagement with professional organisations, education, governance and the wider community.
Professional memberships include:
International Coaching Federation (ICF)
Federation of Holistic Therapists (FHT)
International Alliance of Professional Complimentary Practitioners (IAPCP)
Chartered College of Teaching
BCS – The Chartered Institute for IT
My wider professional and voluntary roles have included:
Lead Judge – TeenTech Awards
Deputy Chair – Sheppey Matters
Trustee – The Bourne Alliance
Author – Hello World
These roles keep me connected with education, technology, leadership, community development and the changing world in which my clients and organisations operate.
HOW I WORK
CURIOUS, RATHER THAN JUDGEMENTAL.
I'm interested in what your behaviour is doing — not in telling you that you shouldn't be doing it.
Behaviour usually makes sense somewhere.
Part of our work is becoming curious enough to understand where.
PRACTICAL, BUT NOT PRESCRIPTIVE.
I like useful things.
Models, questions, exercises and strategies matter when they help you understand something differently or do something differently.
But I don't believe there is one formula that works for everybody.
CHALLENGING WHEN IT HELPS.
Coaching isn't simply reassurance.
Sometimes the useful question is the one that makes you stop for a moment.
I'll support you, but I'll also challenge assumptions, notice patterns and invite you to look at things from another perspective when I think it might help.
HUMAN.
You don't need to perform being a "good client".
You can think aloud, change your mind, swear, laugh, cry, disagree with me or tell me something didn't work.
That's useful information too.
FOCUSED ON INDEPENDENCE.
I want our work to have a beginning, a middle and an end.
The goal is not for you to become brilliant at having coaching.
The goal is for you to become increasingly brilliant at not needing me.
ELEVATEME
INDIVIDUAL COACHING & BEHAVIOURAL CHANGE
For people who want something to change — personally, professionally or both.
You may know exactly what you want to work on, or you may simply know that something doesn't feel quite right anymore.
ElevateME brings together coaching and behavioural change with access to a wider toolkit where appropriate.
You don't need to choose the technique.
Start with what you'd like to be different.
TWO WAYS TO ELEVATE
ETCH now brings my work together through two connected areas.
ELEVATED
TRAINING, COURSES & PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
For individuals, leaders, teams, schools and organisations who want learning that leads somewhere.
ElevatED brings together self-guided learning, leadership and team development, professional training and my continuing work with schools and educational organisations.
The aim is simple:
Learn. Reflect. Experiment. Change.
START WHERE YOU ARE
You don't need to know exactly what you need.
You don't need a perfectly articulated goal.
And you don't need to have worked everything out before you contact me.
If something needs to change, that's enough of a place to start.