Tools and services built from the patterns.
Everything on this page comes out of the same habit: tracing patterns that other people miss, usually because those patterns cross a boundary someone drew. Animals and nervous systems. Classrooms and organizations. The person who doesn't fit one job title and the training program that isn't fixing the real problem. If you've landed here, you probably already know what I mean.
Some of what's below is a guide or a toolkit you can take into your own work. Some of it is a service you can hire me for. All of it is built for people who'd rather understand what's actually going on than get a faster version of the wrong answer.
Guides & Tools
Your Nervous System At Work
A field guide for anxious professionals
For everyone who's been holding it together at work and starting to wonder what it's costing. A short, practical field guide to working with an anxious nervous system — what's actually happening, what helps, and what to stop blaming yourself for. Written by someone who's been there, and who learned a lot of it from teaching anxious students and one extremely anxious dog.
Join the waitlist to be the first to know when it's ready.
A companion guide for L&D professionals and educators is also in the works.
Weird Unicorn Portfolio
For people who don't fit in one box and want to stop trying.
If you're a multipassionate, a career pivoter, a "what do you even do?" person, this is for you. A practical guide to building a portfolio career that holds all of you — without forcing your range into a single job title or apologizing for the shape of it. Launching with a short guide and a limited-run async written review for people who want a second set of eyes on their own weird unicorn portfolio.
Join the waitlist to get notified when the guide and review spots open.
ND Pros AI Toolkit
Your brain isn't broken. Your workflow is.
A practical toolkit for neurodivergent professionals who've figured out that AI isn't just a productivity tool, it's an accommodation. Inside: a field guide to using AI as external executive function, plus a prompt pack built for brains that don't run on neurotypical defaults. Written by someone whose own brain doesn't either.
Join the waitlist to get notified when the toolkit is ready.
Services
I help animal welfare organizations build training that actually works, and I do it by asking a harder question first: is training even the right answer? A lot of the time, the thing a shelter or rescue calls a "training problem" turns out to be a process problem, a staffing problem, or a communication problem wearing training's clothes. The work I do starts by figuring out which one it actually is. I primarily work with animal welfare organizations — shelters, rescues, sanctuaries, veterinary practices, wildlife orgs — but I'm open to adjacent work when the fit is right.
Tier 1: Training Audit
$149 flat fee · 48-hour turnaround · fully async
A structured audit of an existing training program, using a diagnostic framework called the Forge Method. You send me what you've got — the current training materials, the problem you're trying to solve, what's been tried, what's not working. Within 48 hours, you get back a written review that tells you what the actual gap is, whether training is the right intervention at all, and if it is, where the current program is missing the mark.
This is the fastest, lowest-commitment way to work together, and it's the one I recommend starting with. Most organizations don't need a new training program. They need someone to tell them honestly whether the one they have is pointed at the right problem.
Tier 2: Training Design
Project-based · inquire for pricing
When the audit confirms training is genuinely the right answer, or when you already know you need something built from scratch, I design the program. This is custom work, scoped to what the organization actually needs and what the learners can actually absorb. Deliverables vary by project, but typically include a training brief, a course outline, scenario and discussion materials, and a measurement plan with a built-in way to catch it early if the program isn't landing.
Most projects are async-first, with optional calls or site visits when the work genuinely benefits from them. Shelter work especially benefits from in-person observation, and I'll tell you honestly when I think that's worth the added cost and when it isn't.
Tier 3: Ongoing Advisory
Retainer-based · inquire for pricing
For organizations that want a regular set of outside eyes on their L&D work. This isn't fractional L&D leadership and it isn't a substitute for staff. It's advisory — a place to bring problems, drafts, and decisions before they calcify, and get honest feedback from someone who isn't inside the politics of the organization. Format and cadence are flexible. Some clients want a monthly written review; others want to be able to send a Google Doc and get notes back within a few days.
Why this work, and why me
I've spent ten-plus years in learning and development, with an M.Ed. in Instructional Design and in-house experience at Amazon and Nintendo. But the reason I care about animal welfare L&D specifically is that I've watched it from both sides. I volunteer at an animal shelter, and I've seen what happens when training programs are built by people who don't know the realities of the work — the turnover, the volunteer-heavy workforces, the emotional load, the budgets that don't stretch, the fact that a well-designed volunteer onboarding can be the difference between a shelter that holds together and one that quietly falls apart.
I'm also building toward starting my own animal rescue one day. That's not a credential. It's just the reason I don't treat this work as a line of business. I treat it as part of the larger thing I'm here to do.
A lot of what I've noticed about training I first noticed about animals. The way nervous systems learn. The way a bad environment makes a "behavior problem" look like the animal's fault. The way the simplest explanation is usually that something upstream is broken. Those patterns show up in organizations too, and The Canary exists partly to name them.
How to get in touch
The fastest way to start is the Training Audit above — no contact form needed, just the intake questionnaire and payment.
For Training Design, Ongoing Advisory, or any other conversation, use the contact form on the Contact page or email hello@[domain].