I am an author and an academic with over 20 years’ experience in education. As a principal academic at Bournemouth University I work with the head of service excellence embedding a positive organisational culture.

I developed a passion for humanising education, and positivity for wellbeing through my lived experience as an immigrant from Colombia, and as a mature student who became disabled in 2005 with a movement disorder, nerve damage and fibromyalgia. This life-changing experience made me a wheelchair user having a profound effect on the way I view the world.

It enabled me to find collateral beauty in pain and to embrace my new reality with resilience, and with a dream to make a positive impact in the world through education. With this in mind, I completed my doctorate in socio-emotional intelligence, a term I coined, and I became an advocate for inclusion and belonging in education.

I love what I do, and my work has been recognised worldwide through various awards and grants for my commitment to education and widening participation. As part of my widening participation role I developed an online toolkit reaching thousands of Bournemouth University students. Additionally, I am currently leading on a project supporting academics to embed humanising principles within their practice and writing a book on student wellbeing.

I am the wellness expert advisor for the Diocese of Salisbury Academy Trust which reaches 22 schools and over 4,000 children, as well as an Equality and Diversity adviser for various organisations within education.