About us

Jo Wagstaff

CEO, Founder & Teacher

I am a mother of a wonderful 15 year old teenager and have faced many of the struggles that come with juggling a successful career with that of a family and creating meaning, fun and authenticity in my life.

I love to dance, meditate, be in the ocean, travel, be in nature and spend time with friends and family.

I spent almost 20 years working in senior leadership roles in the Australian financial services industry, obtaining all the material things and achieving all I thought I needed to achieve to be ‘happy’, before realising that I wasn’t.

As a woman in my 40s I have spent much of my life ‘searching’. When I look back I am not even sure what I thought I was searching for – at different times money, control, validation, success, excitement, freedom, power, safety, family, love. But most of the time what I was really doing was running away – from myself, from my feelings, my fears, my hurts, my reality, my sense of unworthiness. And often denying my true self, including my values, dreams, purpose, femininity, strengths and talents.

Eventually I hit an emotional, mental and spiritual rock bottom and I stopped. I stopped running and searching.

As I began to take off my many masks and defences, unravel my past patterns and tap into an inner wisdom, I began the real journey – to meet my authentic self (as well as my not so authentic self!) and learn, very gradually, to show up in this world authentically. Perfectly imperfect. It is a daily practice.

I retrained, studied psychotherapy and coaching and became a Search Inside Yourself (Born at Google. Based on Brain Science) Accredited Teacher. I am now an Executive Coach, Facilitator and keynote speaker and work with many leading Australian and global companies to support them to develop mindful and authentic leaders and compassionate and engaged cultures.

What I am most passionate about is inspiring and supporting myself and all women to find their inner voice, to feel free to truly be themselves. To feel confident, calm and connected. To care for themselves as much as they do others. To live a truly authentic and meaningful life.

It has, and continues to be, an extraordinary journey, an incredibly challenging and fulfilling journey. A journey built on the foundation of ongoing Compassionate Self-Awareness.

Heather Albrecht

Teacher

When I reflect back on my life I see that two quests have shaped it – the quest for belonging and the quest for meaning.

These quests have taken me along two quite different paths. One path leading me into the corporate world. The other path taking me into the world of humanistic psychology and the wisdom traditions.

I worked in Marketing and Advertising for over 30 years in leadership roles in Toronto my hometown, New York, and Sydney, Australia – my beautiful adopted country for the last 24 years. I’m now a registered Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapist, and Mindfulness Teacher.

My corporate work has always ridden alongside a deep interest in what makes a life meaningful; I’ve traveled to ashrams in India, extended meditation retreats in Asia and spent time with teachers from many different wisdom traditions and schools of psychology.

I’ve often joked with friends that I feel ‘too hippie for the corporate world and too corporate for the hippie world’. Behind this I’ve felt a lot of confusion about where I fit and who I truly am.

My most powerful challenge in life has been how to be consciously and authentically visible. How to allow the real me to show up fully in all the different parts of my life and relationships?

For me the vulnerability of being authentically visible is that I can be seen. When who I truly am can be seen, I can be touched. And when I can be touched, I can be hurt.

For much of my life I’ve used elaborate ways of looking as if I’m showing up but not. I’ve done this to protect myself from being hurt or judged or humiliated, or misunderstood.

Like only allowing the so-called ‘professional’ parts of me to arrive at the office with all the parts I judged as ‘messy’ left at home.  Or by using my spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing
 with my uncomfortable emotions, my unresolved wounds, hiding from my emotional and psychological needs and inner work.

With the support of mentoring, therapy, my friendship circles of conscious women, my mindfulness practices and communities I’ve learnt that vulnerability isn’t a weakness or something I can arrange to do without; vulnerability is the underlying nature of my true self.

For me Compassionate Self-Awareness has been the most transformative path for living a deeply meaningful and authentic life. It hasn’t been easy yet it’s truly been the most real and rewarding path of my life.

My life’s work is now sharing this path and these practices with other women like you to inspire and support each other to find our inner voices, to find what truly makes our lives meaningful, and to feel confident, calm and connected while being fully ourselves.

Honours Bachelor Business WLU (Canada), Grad Dip Holistic Psychotherapy, Mindfulness Teacher (MBSR), Cert. Holistic Health Couns, Grad Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy, Cert. Yoga Teacher.