I was a designer.
And an actor.
Before fitness, I was a graduate design student and a working actor. Both of those things matter more to how I coach than any certification on a wall. Design taught me that systems should be built around the people who use them, not the other way around. Acting taught me how to read a body in motion — where the tension sits, what a stance is saying, when a small adjustment changes the whole picture.
I didn't plan to become a trainer. I planned to direct theatre. But I kept noticing how rarely the fitness industry treated the people in front of it as actual humans with actual histories. That gap is what eventually pulled me in.
One workout
changed the plan.
A close friend with hypermobility joined me for a workout one afternoon, mostly as a favor. Within ten minutes I was correcting her overhead press — not because I had been formally trained, but because I had eight years of performing arts behind me and could see what her shoulder was doing. I gave her a cue. She tried it. She said, out loud, "I felt that for the first time."
By the end of the hour she said it was the first time she had ever felt safe in a gym. I went home that night thinking about that. Ninety days later I was certified. Two years later, that same friend is still a client.
WHAT I REFUSE TO DO.
I refuse to copy-paste a template. Every program is written by hand the night before your session.
The night before every session, on a yellow legal pad, in blue pen. It doesn't scale. That's the point. If I have nothing to write about you yet, I have no business charging you for a workout.
The feedback that
made it official.
The same friend gave me long-form feedback after that first session — feedback that read like a referral letter from someone who had spent a decade trying to find a gym that worked for her. She told me she would have paid for that hour. She said it changed how she thought about her body. I sat with that for a few days, then I started the paperwork.
Since then every client gets the same treatment. Handwritten programs. A cue for every rep. Texts on Wednesday. The work doesn't scale and I don't want it to.
The thing I will not stop saying.
"There isn't enough genuine support for beginners, those with disabilities, or mobility issues to meet their goals."
The fitness industry is overflowing with content for people who are already fluent. Almost no one is willing to coach inside the gap — the place where you are still learning the language. That gap is my entire practice. If you are inside it, you are exactly who I built this around.
"I write every program by hand the night before. No copy-paste. Ever."
On the wall.
- Certified Personal Trainer (NASM)2024
- Functional Range Conditioning · in progress2025–26
- Graduate, Design (MFA program)2024
- Performing Arts training · 8 years2016–24