The story of my work
I began my career wearing fitted suits and heels in a marble-floored and mahogany-desked financial services office. It was never where I would have imagined my hippy-hearted self. I wrote speeches for the president and communications for all employees. I tried to make people feel cared for during big business transitions. And I chaired the corporate giving foundation and was the person photographed with the giant novelty cheques. While I enjoyed giving away corporate money quite a lot, I knew I wasn’t meant for corporate environments forever and moved on to the non-profit sector. As creative director, I led a team in publishing magazines and websites and rolling out a brand that touched an entire city. From there, at 30, I became a marketing communications vice president, working with teams on both sides of the Atlantic, planning a move to France, an ancestral home.
And then, it all came apart.
So it could come together again, much differently. But I didn’t know that then.
And that meantime — as meantimes tend to be — was painful.
With a broken heart, I picked up and eat-prayed-and-loved across Europe before Liz did. I cried a lot. (I’m a cryer.) I ate so much gelato. I got lost in old villages. And I got found on a hillside in Sienna while wisteria was in bloom, petals falling all around me, in silent meditation. After weeks of not knowing what to do next, I just knew. I’d go home (eventually) and start my own business.
I opened Pink Elephant Communications in Toronto in 2008. I worked exclusively with self-employed clients in helping and creative professions — doulas, practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine, naturopaths, therapists, life coaches, artists. I wanted to use what I learned so well in the monied marbled offices to help the helpers.
I took my quiet place in shaping a new economy by helping my clients tell the stories of their work so that they could be of service to more people. I aimed to make writing — even in commerce — an act of connection, an act of love. My mission statement, pinned above my very first desk (a countertop installed inside a closet in my loft way-back-when), was taken from Kahlil Gibran: Make love visible. It’s still the only thing I want to do.
After 11 years, I retired Pink Elephant Communications to become … me. Still the ghostwriter, still behind the scenes, but now with a name that’s her own.
And the heart of my work is as it always was: the writing. The love that lives in words.
Today, I work with clients around the world, helping them to write things that are hard. The message of their life. The core of their teaching. The thing they most ardently wish to convey — with clarity, precision, and sensitivity. And so much care.
Read about my ghostwriting services, browse my writing guidebooks, or contact me.