I am the mother of three beautiful children, an author, a doula and the founder of Gather, a space and community for women in Melbourne, Australia. I am passionate about supporting families through the life-changing conception, pregnancy, birth and postpartum chapters and holding space for women as they find their footing on this rocky and wonderful road we call motherhood.

When I became pregnant with my first baby in New York City in 2013, I had no idea about my pregnancy and birth options. I chose a hospital birth with an obstetrician but felt like I was still in the dark about so many things as I crept closer to my due date. At around 35 weeks’ pregnant, I hired a doula and in just a few short weeks she provided the education and emotional support we had been searching for. I went on to have an incredibly empowering birth, my daughter born just as the sun was setting over Manhattan on Mother’s Day in 2014.

At the time of her birth, I was working at Victoria’s Secret, leading the editorial team in a relentless, fast-paced role. I returned to work full-time when she was four months old and I found the transition challenging, to say the least. I was still so fresh in my role as ‘mother’ yet trying so hard to hold on to this other life that all of a sudden felt so foreign.

I quickly realised that I couldn’t balance motherhood and this career in a way that felt right to me. I left my job and we left New York at the end of 2015. We travelled around Europe for a few months before returning home to Australia, and I took time during this trip to pause, be present with our daughter and think about my next move. One image kept coming back to me during this time: my doula holding my hand as I birthed my baby. I don’t know what kind of birth I would have had had she not been present, but I do know my husband and I would have felt lost and untethered without her.

Becoming a doula felt like a natural next step for me. I’d become a huge birth nerd during my first months as a new mother and I was so hungry to learn more. I became a certified doula through Carriage House Birth a couple of years later and have been supporting Melbourne families for four years. In 2018 I opened Gather in Melbourne’s inner-west and in 2020 I was asked by Hardie Grant Books to write my first book, The Birth Space. My second book, The Motherhood Space, followed in 2023.

I am currently working as a birth doula, educator and doula mentor, running Gather, thinking about a third book and of course, raising our three children.