My story is one defined by audacious optimism. From a young age I remember every eyelash that dropped, I would blow with the wish for world peace. Every birthday cake I blew out the candles. It was always world peace. But of course, that was just a fallacy. A wasted wish. Naive. Cute of me. 

I hated being called cute. People would look at my cheerful demeanor and dismiss me as simply "cute," as if my optimism was some childish naivete rather than the innate foundation of my character. I am not cute. I am brave! 

When I was six, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Between eight and fifteen, I fell into six diabetic comas. Managing diabetes is incredibly challenging, especially for a child. But my outlook was always the same: I’d think, no, I am lucky. I have an illness that yes, challenges me but does not stop me. Many people have it far worse. 

Later came the dyslexia diagnosis. Suddenly, my classroom struggles and inability to spell made sense. I had to study incredibly hard to achieve good grades. But at least I never struggled with my people skills or creativity.

While balancing my chronic illness and my studies, I was also a successful competitive gymnast. At sixteen, I stood on the first-place podium at the British National Finals. A British Champion! I was later awarded the inaugural Patricia Wade Award, recognising gymnasts who embody endeavour in sport. I also achieved the grades I needed to attend a Russell Group university.

Every barrier in my way made me stronger. My audacious belief that everything was going to work out just fine energised my effort to a place of success.

At The University of Manchester (UoM), I studied Fashion Marketing BSc. I wanted to learn business skills while feeding my creativity and love for self-expression. All my life I had been inspired by Vivienne Westwood's ability to blend the adornment of the body with messages for a better world.

From my third year, I achieved an internship in Vivienne Westwood's press office—a dream come true and one of those star‑crossed moments where life quietly sets up a future you can’t yet see. The year after I graduated with a 2.1 winning best fashion project. Not bad for a dyslexic!

Prior to graduating however, in 2017, everything changed. I stood at the Stop the Arms Fair protest, watching grandmas get arrested for sitting in the road while police protected war machinery heading to London's Excel Centre. At that moment, I realised I had been living in a carefully constructed illusion. Britain was not the human rights champion I had believed it to be.

How could we be fighting for peace, when we are selling weapons to war criminals?

That awakening ignited a fire within me. When I returned to university and tried to raise awareness about the arms fair, I discovered something even more disturbing: higher education and lower education were deeply entangled with the arms trade. The very institutions meant to enlighten were complicit in profiting from war.

I campaigned on this issue at UoM and experienced the need for an organisation that holds data tracking university partnerships with the arms trade. I co-founded Demilitarise Education in 2019. There it was again. That audacious feeling that I could actually change things. And I did.

I built a team and then the world's first universities and arms database and a demilitarise education treaty. We have now exposed billions in UK university ties to arms dealers and achieved real policy change in favour of arms exclusion at numerous universities.

By looking directly at how education is used to fuel the war machine I begun to understand why throughout my younger years my desire for a better world was met as naive. We have been teaching it as so! The cultural implication of allowing the arms trade and military into our education positions peacebuilding as weak and unrealistic.

But if peace isn't considered a possibility, we are sure to not achieve it. Education should be teaching us how to make peace, not perpetuate conflict.

So my mission was set. I worked day in day out to build Demilitarise Education putting my heart and soul into it. 

A few years later in 2021 that star crossed moment happened, when I was invited to introduce Vivienne Westwood to speak at the Stop the Arms Fair protest. I then personally took her on a tour to the protest camp, sharing in her passion for environmental and social justice.

Then in 2022, I was one of just four campaigners invited by Vivienne Westwood to speak at her Intellectuals Unite event. This sadly became her last speaking event. Her legacy of fearless activism and creative rebellion will always stay with me. Never could I have imagined to meet my hero and speak alongside her. It reminded me, anything is possible.

I continued headfirst in my work, and went on to support in contributing a chapter to Jeremy Corbyn's seminal work on gun violence, collaborated with voices from arms trade expert Andrew Feinstein and investigative journalist Richard Norton-Taylor to activist Stella Assange and artist Lowkey, guest lectured at universities challenging them to champion peace innovation over militarisation, presented at the 2021 World Peace Congress, and shared insights on a variety of global podcasts, publications, platforms and events and more…

But as I worked non stop to address the education systems complicity in global conflicts, I noticed my positivity found it harder and harder to exist in activist spaces. It is no surprise that activists facing the world's problems head-on are bound to feel negatively about the world.

For a while I observed quietly, respecting their vigilance. But as my reputation was built I became more confident in once again being authentically me. My optimism has always been my greatest strength. It would be a disservice to my contribution to the peace movement to not champion positivity.

And so The Ethereal Activist was born. Our world is currently designed to depress, deflate and dehumanise. And I wanted to help people shed some of that negativity. So I began to bring my personal passion for studying self-healing and spiritual practices, beyond into my work.

I later qualified as a Reiki Practitioner and began offering my services so as to help people with their own healing journeys. Self-healing is a core element of the global fight for peace. For starters, when living in an extractive system, it is very difficult to find the energy to take action to change the system. Especially if we are feeling negative or unwell.

Spiritual practices like Reiki can help us align with audacious optimism. Optimism isn’t naïve — it’s fuel. When we shift our inner state, we shift what feels possible, and action follows. And so my work was set. Helping the world to realign to peace — by strengthening inner foundations and challenging the systems (including education) that normalise war. 

This is my story — from a young girl dismissed for dreaming of world peace, to an adult doing the work to help make it real.

And I’m sharing it to remind you of something simple and radical: you are part of this mission. World peace isn’t built only in institutions and headlines — it begins in people. So take your inner peace seriously. Not as self-indulgence, but as a precondition. Because a regulated, grounded, hopeful person can do what a burnt-out, despairing one cannot: stay present, stay brave, and keep choosing peace not just for you but for the world.