About Heather Bailey
Leadership coach and facilitator. Founder of ThinkFRESH.
I’ve spent my working life in places where people care for other people. Community health organisations in the United States. Aged care and birthing rooms in New Zealand. Senior leadership in a stretched health system.
Across all of it, I’ve watched the same dynamics unfold. Good ideas and real commitment and caring fall flat because of the stress and tensions that no one is looking after.
When you are running on empty with a short fuse, you can’t be the person your team or your clients need. When people don’t trust each other and can’t talk about what’s going unsaid, they can’t build better ways of working. And when there’s nothing left for themselves, there’s nothing left to give anyone else.
None of this is a personal failing. People work inside stretched systems, under decisions they didn’t make, and they bring whole lives through the door with them. Much of the pressure starts well beyond any one person.
What people can do is tend what’s within their reach: their own steadiness, and how they treat each other when things are hard. Done together, that makes the pressure and uncertainty easier to carry, and it makes better systems possible.
I founded ThinkFRESH to help leaders and teams tend themselves, so they can keep caring well for the people they serve.
Why I do this work
As Director of Midwifery, I led people doing some of the most demanding work there is, in a system that rarely had enough. I watched skilled, caring people wear themselves down. I saw how many barriers stood between them and the care they knew how to give.
I then moved into a national role leading system change. I was restructured three times. I watched a system that couldn’t get out of its own way, while the people who most needed change kept waiting. I felt the toll.
I left to return to what I love the most: helping people under pressure find ways to restore their balance. Now I help leaders and teams tend themselves, so they can keep caring for others and keep pushing for more caring, responsive systems.
ThinkFRESH is what I wish I’d had as a leader, and what I wish my teams had had too.
I also run BRAVEKind, coaching for women who give a lot to everyone else and want to come back to themselves.
How I work
Experience first
Information fades by Monday. An experience stays with you. Every coaching session begins with people feeling something different for themselves: what it’s like to steady themselves, to notice without fixing, to respond instead of react. Then they take a small practice into their week and make it their own.
The body as well as the mind
Stress shows up in the body before we can think our way through it. My approach draws on acceptance and commitment therapy, self-compassion research, mindfulness and somatic practice. The evidence sits underneath the work. What people experience is practical and useful straight away.
A simple cycle for hard moments
I teach a simple restorative practice that gives everyone, from senior leaders to the front line, the same language for dealing with tension.
Designed with you
I listen first: to your context, your people, and what’s already working. Every programme is shaped around that, and your own people can be trained to carry it on.
At a glance
30+ years in health and community leadership, in NZ and the US
National maternity system change leader (Kahu Taurima) and former Director of Midwifery, Southern DHB
Former NZ-registered nurse and midwife
Certified coach: PREKURE Master Health and Mental Health Coach
BA Midwifery (with distinction) 2008
BA Nursing (Honors) 2004
BA Political and Social Thought (Honors) 1994
Let’s talk
If something here sounds like you or your team, I’d love to hear what’s happening. A conversation will tell us both whether the work is a good fit.
Ready now? Text 027 300 7375