Who are ADHD Impact?
ADHD Impact started life as a business consultancy for ADHD brains.
We worked with organisations to help them understand how to better support ADHD employees, coached ADHD professionals and founders, and created ADHD Founders Connect- helping founders learn how to do business in a way that works for their brain, while building a network and community of people whose brains work like theirs.
Over the years, the work became less about helping people fit into systems that weren’t designed for them, and more about helping people understand themselves well enough to stop fighting their own brains. That shift came from seeing the same thing again and again: incredibly capable people doing well on paper, while behind the scenes they were exhausted by how much effort it took to keep everything going.
And, in true ADHD style, it evolved.
They were overthinking, overcommitting, people-pleasing, holding themselves to impossible standards, taking criticism too personally and constantly pushing themselves to stay on top of life.
A lot of them looked successful.
A lot of them didn’t feel successful.
I call this The ADHD Success Paradox, the pattern I see time and time again where, as someone becomes more successful, maintaining their career and the rest of their life can actually start to feel harder rather than easier.
One of the things I love most about this work is watching what happens when people stop using all their energy just to stay afloat. People often come into coaching exhausted, second-guessing themselves and quietly wondering why life seems to take so much more out of them than it should. As they start to understand themselves better and trust their own way of doing things, something shifts.
They start to back themselves more, make decisions they’ve been avoiding, stop assuming the answer is to push harder, lean into their natural strengths and one of my favourite parts; start to dream bigger.
My work is about helping people understand what is actually costing them so much, and changing it in a way that fits their brain, their life and the level of ambition they want to keep.
That became the thread running through more and more of my work.
Today, my focus is on helping successful ADHD founders and professionals build lives that feel as good as they look from the outside.
I’ve watched clients create new businesses, step into bigger roles, change the way they lead, make bold decisions and go after things they previously thought were out of reach, not because they suddenly became more capable, but because they stopped spending so much of their capacity fighting themselves.
That’s the part of my job I never get tired of.
Because I don’t believe success should require you to live permanently overwhelmed, on edge or mentally exhausted.
My mission is to help ambitious ADHD people create bigger, fuller, more enjoyable lives without having to sacrifice the things that make them brilliant in the first place.
ADHD Impact for Organisations
ADHD Impact still works with organisations too. Our corporate services, including ADHD awareness, support for ADHD employees and coaching, are now delivered by trusted associates.
We’ve worked with organisations including:
The story behind the work
I’ve always kind of known I was ambitious and capable.
I also couldn’t understand why work, relationships and everyday life seemed to take so much out of me.
It makes a lot more sense looking backwards…
1987
Born in Newcastle
I was born in Newcastle and, aged one, headed off to Carlisle where I was raised.
2005-2008
Back to the Toon for university
I studied Psychology at Northumbria University and graduated with First Class Honours.
I was also desperately pushing myself to achieve, as though anything less than a First meant failure.
The pattern was already there: achievement on the outside, exhaustion underneath.
2008–2013
Five years in sales — constantly starting again
After university, I spent around five years in sales, moving from job to job and hoping the next one would finally be where everything clicked.
I worked hard, but never really felt settled. At the time, I assumed the problem was the role, the company or the team.
I hadn’t yet considered that I might be trying to succeed in environments that simply didn’t work for me.
2014–2015
MSc Occupational Psychology
I went back to psychology and completed my Master’s in Occupational Psychology, moving towards the thing I’d always been most interested in: people, work, performance and why some environments allow us to thrive while others slowly wear us down.
September 2015
Founded Brighty People Coaching & Consulting
I discovered I was genuinely good at the work. I loved coaching. I loved delivering workshops. Clients got results.
But running the business itself felt relentlessly hard.
I’d work incredibly hard, burn myself out, recover and start again.
I couldn’t understand why someone who seemed so capable could find building a consistently successful business so difficult.
May 2022
Diagnosed with ADHD at 34
I was four months pregnant with my second child when I was diagnosed.
Suddenly, decades of my life made sense.
The anxiety. The burnout. The intensity. Feeling different in workplaces. Being brilliant at the interesting bits and overwhelmed by everything around them.
I hadn’t lacked ambition or ability.
I’d spent years trying to succeed in ways that didn’t work for my brain.
October 2023
I launched ADHD Impact. And finally, it worked.
I combined everything I’d learned as a Business Psychologist and coach with the lived experience of finally understanding my own brain.
And the business took off.
For the first time, I wasn’t desperately trying to force something to succeed.
I’d found the work I was uniquely placed to do.
The success finally started to show
A huge tax bill I was actually delighted to have.
After years of wondering whether I’d ever make a business properly work, I suddenly had tangible proof that something had changed.
Shortlisted for a Great British Entrepreneur Award
After so many years of feeling like entrepreneurship was something I should be able to make work but somehow couldn’t, being recognised for it meant a lot.
Launched ADHD Founders Connect
I created the UK’s first in-person business growth membership for ADHD founders, a space to learn how to do business in a way that works for your brain, while building a network and community of people whose brains work like yours.
April 2025–May 2026
Everything changed (again)
In June 2025, we discovered our forever home had been making us ill for years, because of hidden mould in the garage beneath it, and we had to leave.
Over the following year, my health fell apart. I dealt with crushing fatigue, headaches, dizziness, brain fog, insomnia, racing heart, light and sound sensitivity, reactions to buildings and fragrances, gut problems and many days where even standing up or talking felt like too much.
Illness, treatment, testing, temporary accommodation and trying to create a safe life for my family eventually consumed the savings I’d spent years building.
Within months, the life I’d thought was secure looked completely different.
For the first time, I started to understand that things I’d spent years labelling as anxiety, oversensitivity, tiredness or lack of resilience often had a much bigger story underneath them.
Now
I rebuilt differently.
For most of my life, success meant pushing through: working harder, coping better, becoming more disciplined and trying to make myself fit whatever version of life I thought I should be able to manage.
Illness forced me to question what I actually wanted, what success meant to me, what I was no longer willing to sacrifice and what kind of life genuinely worked for my brain and body.
I have never felt more peaceful.
I have never felt more confident.
And I have never had bigger ambitions.
But I also walk on the beach every morning, tuck my children into bed every night and take an hour for lunch every damn day.
That, to me, is the point.
And it’s the same thing I want for the people I work with: not a smaller life, but a bigger one that doesn’t cost them so much to live.
2004
Diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder
For years, I thought anxiety explained why my brain felt so busy, why everything felt so intense and why ordinary life seemed to take more energy from me than it did from other people.
