Credentials & Training

Professional Training

All of my recovery coach training is through Still Here, a Canadian recovery coach training organization.

Sixteen of those hours are ethics on its own. That's deliberate. Most of the genuinely hard moments in coaching aren't about technique — they're about boundaries, confidentiality, scope, and knowing the difference between what I can help with and what I need to stay out of.

Was My Coaching Assessed?

Yes — and this is worth asking any coach you are considering.

Every one of these courses included live coaching sessions that were observed and assessed by accredited recovery coaches. They critiqued the sessions, told me plainly where I needed to improve, and confirmed what I was doing well. I wasn't graded on attendance. Someone experienced watched me actually coach, and said so.

That is the difference between a coach who has sat through training and a coach whose training tested them. Ask about it. If a coach can't answer, that tells you something.

Professional Membership

I'm a member in good standing of Recovery Coaches Canada (RCC), the national not-for-profit working to establish standards for recovery coaching in Canada. My membership is renewed annually.

RCC also awards a national accreditation, the ARCC — Accredited Recovery Coach of Canada — which requires demonstrated competency in observed coaching sessions in addition to training and adherence to a national code of ethics. I'm working toward it and I don't hold it yet. The moment I do, it will appear on this page. Until then it won't, because a credential you're pursuing is not a credential you have — and you deserve to know the difference.

Lived Experience

Training tells you what a coach studied. It doesn't tell you whether they understand what you're carrying.

Before I found true, sustained recovery, I spent ten years in recovery battling to stay sober. I was in it the whole time — trying, working at it, wanting it — and I still struggled, and I didn't fully succeed in any of those years. It was very difficult, and it was hardest on the people around me who simply wanted me to be healthy and at peace.

Thank goodness, that day came — the day I found true, sustained recovery. Life has been different ever since.

I've walked the road. I understand the fear, the shame, and the hope. That isn't a credential you can print, but it's the reason the ones above matter to me: I know what it costs when the person walking beside you doesn't really understand.

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Professional Background

Before coaching, I spent thirty-five years in business, most recently in senior leadership. That matters for one specific reason: many of the people I work with are holding a career together with both hands while privately questioning their drinking. I have sat in that exact chair.

What I Am — and What I'm Not

I'm a Certified Recovery Coach. I'm not a therapist, a counsellor, or a doctor, and recovery coaching is not treatment, therapy, or medical care.

Coaching works alongside those things, never instead of them. If counselling, medical care, or treatment is part of your journey, I'll support you through it — but I won't pretend to be it.