I am a writer and certified professional coach, and have been coaching since 1989. In 2004, I became an inaugural recipient of the Thomas Leonard Coaching Award. I am the president of Unlimited Inç, which I established in 1990, and Spa for the Mind Coaching & Communication Inc., which I incorporated in 2003. I am a certified meditation instructor, certified university instructor and wine educator.
I have a first degree in economics from the University of Cape Town, a Masters in communication from Simon Fraser University, a PhD from the University of British Columbia (UBC) and a post-PhD university-level learner-centred teaching certificate, also from UBC. My PhD dissertation research looked at the role of ideas in social change, specifically at think tanks and the people and groups who, positioned within them, take a leadership role in the realm of ideas. My external examiners, both internationally recognized as specialists in their fields, gave high praise to the dissertation (see their remarks here). In my Masters research I considered leadership styles over the 20th century in the context of the technologies used to communicate the vision and capabilities of various leaders.
My work has been published in books, journals, newspapers and magazines as well as in CD format.
I design, develop and present programmes for individuals and corporate and professional groups, create curricula at both the intermediate and advanced levels and help design projects and facilitate their completion within personal, management, union and educational environments. The groups I work with range in size from 15 to 200 and involve participants from the professional, educational and corporate arenas. Examples of some of the learning environments I have designed can be found here and here.
In March 1998, I was invited to be a B.C. Newspaper Awards judge.
In 2002, I assisted colleagues with a seminar presented by international leadership and team-building author and workshop presenter Richard Olivier, son of Sir Laurence Olivier, which used Shakespeare’s Henry V as a case study in successful leadership, given its theme of uniting a group of disparate people around a common goal to overcome great difficulty against the odds, which is an area in which I work.
I am a founder member of the international coaching organisation CoachVille, which has 45,000 members and operates in 125 countries, am its founding Vancouver Chapter President and Study Group Host, served as an advisory board member of CoachVille’s think tank and joined the think tank’s brain trust by invitation when it was founded. In 2002 I served on CoachVille’s IAC board of examiners, the organisation charged with the setting up of a certification process for coaches, also serving on the IAC’s board of ethics from February 2005 to May 2006. I am also a founder leader for the NLP Solution Focused Coaching Association in Vancouver, which was established in January 2002.
My coach training includes NLP-based certification from Erickson College, which operates in 23 countries and is one of the largest coaching schools, train-the-trainer training and formal qualifications obtained in narrative therapy in 1995, short-term dynamic psychotherapy in 1997 and Brief Therapy through the Milton H. Erickson Foundation in 2003. I assisted in an NLP-based coaching certification programme in 2003 and obtained my meditation instructor certification in Thailand in March 2004.
I worked in the 1980s as a journalist covering economics, business, finance, politics and civil war, mostly as a foreign correspondent for Reuters, the world’s largest and oldest news and information organisation. After immigrating to Canada, I taught social and cultural theory and practice with a health, medical, technology, communication and media focus at the university level for eight years. This included teaching in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at UBC, the Department of Psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine at UBC, and the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University.
My various experiences and trainings have exposed me to many different circumstances and extensive travel, have honed my listening and questioning skills and instilled in me a recognition of the importance of having a calm mind, paying close attention, being curious and reserving judgment. In addition, these experiences have fostered an awareness of the benefits of designing and building context-sensitive structures, being goal-oriented and holding oneself, as well as others, accountable. These are key attributes for the practice of leadership training and coaching, and qualities I bring to my coaching relationships.
My work with clients, designing the supportive environments and creative spaces they need, is informed by the expertise I have gained from working in, and seeing up close, examples of organisations that do this extremely well, and some that do it badly. A career in international journalism afforded me personal access to successful leaders of countries, corporations and political and social movements and an opportunity to model the skills associated with successful leadership and organisation. Clients have included international advertising agency J Walter Thompson, the global non-profit YMCA, telecommunications company Telus, firms in the wine, hotel, restaurant, health and cultural industries as well as professionals in the media, medical, legal, aviation and educational fields across Canada and in the U.S., the U.K., Dubai, Egypt and South Africa.
On the personal front, I have faced the challenge of making a comeback after an accident that left me without the use of my right arm and with difficulties speaking, among other injuries. I can now walk the walk, talk the talk and again wield the quill with lightness and vigour.
My career background — along with my teaching and training expertise and my experience training adult learners and developing curricula — enables me to feel confident and comfortable working in any environment and with a wide array of organisations and individuals facing change, helping them to gain greater awareness of the choices open to them, aligning core values with future options and crafting supportive environments in which they can achieve what they have set as goals.
I am a certified wine educator, having successfully completed a three-part wine and spirits programme in 1975. I am the wine consultant for a Vancouver restaurant and was the wine consultant for the YMCA’s 150th anniversary event. I conduct seminars on wine as well as team-building seminars which use wine and wine knowledge in this team-building process.
I write and coach in Vancouver, British Columbia, where I live with my husband John, to whom I’ve been married for 28 years. We have a son who is happily independent in a fine relationship with his partner and baby daughter.
I first visited the Roman spa at Bath depicted on this website more than three decades ago as a young woman, was immediately drawn to it and have returned on a number of occasions.
© S Fuller 2010