About Me

Professional Information:
Dr Dawn Heather & Associates Consultancy Services offering the following:
Strategic Consulting: including project development and management.
Professional Empowerment: Industrial psychology based analysis of people and roles, from individual to corporate levels. Creating and managing customised solutions based on motivation, method and maintenance. Promoting organisational health.
Personal Empowerment - identifying goals and using an eclectic therapeutic approach to create self-fulfilment strategies.
Diagnosis and Assessment related to Asperger Syndrome and ASD.
Continuing Professional Development training - ASD and AS for therapists/clinicians

Personal Background:
I was born in Cornwall, and spent the first years of my life in Sierra Leone, returning to UK to attend school. Over the years, my school experiences ranged from UK to East Africa and back - so fairly diverse in culture.

My interests have always been wide, I am intensely curious and have a passion for all things living. I have been privileged in my life to meet some amazing people and my most wonderful experiences include having an adorable son and a warm loving daughter-in-law, and the birth of my first grandbaby!!! - (oh and celebrating my 50th birthday on the bottom of the ocean at the Manacles).

Life has been a serendipitous journey for me so far, involving a range of different professional roles, from wedding videographer, dance teacher in mainstream education, researcher, to clinical hypnotherapist - yet it has brought me to a point where I have a clear philosophical underpinning and I know what I want to achieve.

My research into social interaction and Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) has led me to realise that empowering people to make their own choices, to achieve their full potentials, can only be achieved through true collaboration. This is as true in industry as it is at home.

My previous employment involved the creation of environments for people with ASDs in residential care and the streamlining of services delivery and security. Last year, as the pressure from Care Standards moved service providers more towards security and compliance, I made the decision to keep to my original people-focused path and to use my skills to their full potential, and so I stepped into self-employment.

To my mind, analysis of people and processes identifies the areas of: how to motivate individuals within groups to work towards shared goals; how to provide methods of achieving this that are sufficiently flexible to appeal to each of them; and then how to maintain this level of incentive in the long term. The introduction of AI into these processes provides the opportunity for systems to be taught to learn in such a way that they then inform future practice with a view to ultimately facilitating predictions. This is not to suggest that machines should replace people, but rather that elegant tools can allow individuals to focus on their real passion whilst increasing efficiency and relieving arduous repetition.

As you can tell I am passionate about what I do - I have also been described as courageous (not sure about that one - but hey, you don't know unless you try). What I know to be true is that when I listen closely to your needs, I know I can find a way to help you achieve your goals - or at least, I know a 'man' who can.

The greatest gift is seeing someone else's success and being able to say inwardly 'I helped a bit' -and then move on.
Thanks for reading this
Dawn