Faced with a pivotal moment in my personal and professional life, the decision to reinvent myself and forge a new path became evident. Resolute to pursue my two passions without compromise, The Butterfly Potential was born, offering both education consultancy and translation services.
The company is based on my firm belief that small, carefully curated decisions have a powerful and lasting impact. As an educator, and life-long learner, I believe that it is all about making small tweaks to your practice for maximum impact, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. In translation, much like the delicate flutter of a butterfly’s wings can cause a chain reaction, choosing the wrong register, word or cultural reference could have catastrophic consequences and cause a lot of damage to your business and reputation.
My attention to detail, awareness of the bigger picture and ability to motivate others have been recognised throughout my career. I am excited to put my skills to good use to help you achieve your potential.
I am a native French speaker, also fluent in Spanish, and currently trying to revive and enhance my old GCSE Italian. I have two passions: translation and education.
I started my career as a qualified teacher in a Language College in the north of England and I have experience of teaching primary, secondary and adult learners. When I became a Primary Languages consultant for Leeds City Council in 2006, I led training sessions for teachers, leaders and pupils, organised school partnerships between Leeds and Lille, supported international visits, and organised city-wide languages projects. During my nearly 20 years of experience as a consultant, the role widened to many areas of school improvement and my expertise goes beyond Languages. I created and delivered training around a wide range of learning and teaching areas such as subject leadership, metacognition, oracy, effective partnership with support staff, coaching and mentoring, creativity, and effective questioning, to name but a few. I was the primary ECT coordinator in Leeds for 12 years, during which I created and developed an extensive suite of training for new teachers, their induction tutors and mentors, as well as a very robust quality assurance system to ensure ECTs were supported fairly and effectively. To ensure that solid practitioners remained in Leeds schools, I devised a leadership programme for recently qualified teachers, and delivered a bespoke version for a group of schools in South Leeds for many years. Drawing from my own experiences and research, I also became a specialist in EAL pedagogy, and I have supported whole schools, teams, and individual teachers with new EAL learners. I created training modules to welcome new arrivals, presented at the NALDIC RIG on EAL and SEND, and become an accredited Word Aware trainer. In addition, I have been the Young Interpreters champion for the Yorkshire and Humber region I am passionate about supporting colleagues to grow their practice and I have a keen interest in children’s personal development, including intercultural understanding.
As well as being an educator, I am a freelance translator based in Leeds, working with French, Spanish and English. Throughout my career, I have translated and interpreted between French and English informally. It was actually a childhood ambition to be a translator and I formalised this by doing an MA in Translation Studies with the Open University, for which I was awarded a Merit in March 2024. I focused my dissertation on the translation of Culture Specific Items in the crime novel Yeruldelgger by Ian Manook, as intercultural understanding is a particular area of interest. I have experience of translation in the domains of literature, business, marketing, news, tourism, food, culture, the arts and humanities, as well as experience of technical and audiovisual translation. I am a member of ITI, CIOL and YTI.
In October 2023, I had the opportunity to combine my two passions, education and translation, and became an associate of Stephen Spender Trust, a charity who delivers creative translation workshops from KS2 to 4, with a focus on working as a linguist and effective use of the English language. These workshops are very rewarding. It is a joy to work with budding linguists and emerging creative writers!
On a Saturday morning, I help at La Petite Ecole de Leeds, a non-profit supplementary school for French speaking children in the region. I started sharing my expertise there when my children were attending, a long time ago! It is lovely to work with the teachers, children and the wider community, to foster a love of French as our native language, and to promote intercultural understanding.