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ABOUT SOPHIE
I teach what I live. Every single day.
I’m Sophie — ICF certified – Thrive performance expert, holistic life coach, facilitator, keynote speaker and the person who built a methodology out of everything I had to figure out the hard way.
The honest version
For a long time, my life looked great from the outside. I was building things, showing up, achieving. But underneath, I was running on empty — juggling family, business, corporate job, study, and a relationship that was quietly falling apart, all while putting on the kind of face that says everything is fine. When my relationship ended in 2018, everything I’d been holding together came undone at once. And instead of pushing through — which had always been my default — I did something different. I stopped. I got honest. I went deep into understanding why I operated the way I did, what was driving the patterns that kept playing out, and what it would really take to build a life that worked.
That process changed everything. Not just personally, but professionally. I realised the tools I’d been using on myself were exactly what other people were desperately searching for. So in 2020 I retrained as a certified Life Coach and launched my practice.
Since then, I’ve worked with 200+ personal coaching clients, built multiple programmes and offerings that meet people at different stages of their journey, delivered corporate workshops and worked with countless businesses, launched my first retreat and spoke on stage to hundreds of people. And I’ve done all of it while prioritising myself, my wellbeing, and my two daughters.
I’m not interested in helping people cope better with a life that isn’t working.
I’m interested in helping them build a life that does.
Why this work, and why now
We are living through a collective burnout. Not the dramatic kind that makes headlines — the slow, creeping kind that has become so normal we’ve stopped noticing it. People are tired. Genuinely, deeply tired. Overworked, overstimulated, and so busy keeping up that they’ve forgotten what it feels like to enjoy their lives.
It’s not because people aren’t trying hard enough. It’s because we are trying to live and work using frameworks that were built for a world that no longer exists. The hustle-harder, sacrifice-more, rest-when-you’re-dead model of success was never designed for human beings. Rising rates of anxiety and burnout. Relationships running on fumes. A generation of high-achievers who have everything on paper and feel empty underneath.
The pressure isn’t letting up. If anything, it’s increasing. The pace of modern life, the always-on culture, the weight of global uncertainty — these aren’t temporary conditions to push through. They are the environment we are living in. And the tools most of us were given to cope with that environment are hopelessly outdated.
We don’t need more people who are better at managing stress.
We need more people who have stopped accepting stress as the default.
This is why the inner work matters — not as a luxury or a self-indulgence, but as a necessity. Learning how to regulate your nervous system, understand your patterns, and build a life that genuinely sustains you isn’t just good for you. It changes how you show up for the people around you. It changes how you lead, how you parent, how you love. It ripples outward in ways that are hard to measure but impossible to ignore.
And frankly — it matters for what comes next. The way we are living and working right now is not sustainable. Not for us, not for our communities, and not for the planet. The shift has to start somewhere. It starts with the individual deciding there is a better way. That’s what this work is about. And that’s why now.
How I work
My approach is holistic, practical, and — I’ll be honest — a little unconventional. I don’t do fluffy. I don’t do generic. And I’m not interested in surface-level solutions to deep-rooted patterns.
What I bring is a rare combination of intuition and rigour, grounded in a deep understanding of human behaviour and biology. I’m deeply empathetic and I’ll meet you exactly where you are — but I’ll also challenge you, hold you accountable, and tell you the truth when the truth is what’s needed. What I hear most from clients isn’t that they feel better — it’s that they’ve finally shifted patterns they’ve been stuck in for years, often despite having tried everything else. That’s because this work doesn’t patch things over. It changes things at the source.
I draw on neuroscience, nervous system work, behavioural psychology, and my own extensive personal development practice to create something that is both evidence-informed and human. Because the best coaching isn’t clinical — it’s the right combination of knowledge, instinct, and real connection.
Holistic By Design
I work across all four dimensions of wellbeing — mental, emotional, physical, and relational — because they’re all connected. Addressing one without the others only ever creates partial change.
NO BULLSHIT
I have a high-standard, results-focused approach. I’m warm and I’m nurturing — but I’m also direct. If something needs to be said, I’ll say it. Kindly, but clearly.
WALKING THE TALK
Every tool I teach, I use. Every concept I share, I’ve lived. This isn’t a profession I fell into — it’s the result of years of doing this work on myself, in real life, under real pressure.
LONG-TERM THINKING
Quick fixes don’t interest me. I’m here to help create permanent shifts — in how you think, how you operate, and how you experience your life. That takes real work, and it’s worth it.
A little more about me
I was born in New Zealand in 1988 to German parents, grew up in Stuttgart, and came back to Aotearoa at 16 for a foreign exchange — and never quite left. New Zealand felt like home in a way I couldn’t explain and still can’t fully articulate. So, I stayed.
I completed a Bachelor of Three-Dimensional Design at Unitec Auckland in 2011 — a degree that shaped my love for experience design, which still runs through everything I create. I’ve worked across wellness, events, theatre, hospitality, media, and publishing — and built my own product business along the way.
In 2020 I retrained as a certified Life Coach, and in the same year graduated with a Diploma in Te Reo Māori. In their own way, both felt like coming home. It reminded me that learning and growth is core to my existence, happiness and ability to perform.
Outside of work I’m someone who loves life — the big moments and the small ones. I’m vibrant, I’m fun, and I bring that energy into every room I walk into. My clients often say that just being around me makes them feel better. I take that as the highest compliment.
Credentials and experience
CERTIFIED LIFE COACH
Formally trained and certified in life and results coaching with an ICF accredited provider.
200+ CLIENTS SERVED
Across personal coaching, corporate programmes, and retreats.
BACHELOR OF DESIGN, 3D
Expertise in conceptual thinking, design development and crafting memorable experiences.
TRAINED FACILITATOR
Experienced and trained in group facilitation for workshops, team immersions, and corporate programmes.
Specialized in working with high achievers
6 Years of being close and personal with high-achieving individuals who are looking to accelerate their results.
BACKGROUND ACROSS MULTIPLE INDUSTRIES
Wellness, events, theatre, hospitality, media, and publishing.
My mission is to support clients — individuals and businesses alike — to draw on a holistic and long-term sustainable approach to life, wellness, and work that nurtures their innate ability to grow and succeed in our modern world.
My vision is a world where people feel empowered to live well — in harmony with themselves, their environment, and the people they love.
My purpose is to leave a legacy. Of people who stopped just surviving. Of businesses that take care of their people. Of a culture that has moved from profit-driven to people-driven — because we’ve seen the cost of the alternative and we no longer accept that cost as normal.