MSoc Sc (Counseling), Grad Dip (Arts)
Dawn is a Singaporean by birth, however as a global nomad, she has studied and worked in Osaka, Paris, New York, and Hong Kong, and as such appreciates the difficulties many people experience when moving and living abroad. Dawn earned her Master’s Degree in Counselling from the Swinburne University of Technology. She has over eight years of experience in the counselling field in Singapore.
As a psychotherapist, she has a passion for working therapeutically across various ages, genders and cultures. She takes a humanistic approach and has a special interest in child and adolescent issues. Recognizing that relationship patterns both enable and limit the process of development and change, she adopts a systemic approach to working with youth and their families.
For these and all of her clients, she implements a wide range of evidence-based strategies. Of particular use to her work are Solution-Focused Therapy (SFBT), Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Eye-Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR), and Mindfulness-Based Interventions. The latter strategy she has also honed for children especially, engineering and introducing a mindfulness programme for children in Singapore, as well as developing curriculum for MOE and international schools.
Dawn is a certified trainer of FRIENDS, a WHO recognised social-emotional learning programme. Dawn is also a certified teacher of Mindfulness based stress reduction (the gold standard of mindfulness programme), having completed her training in Centre for Mindfulness, University of Massachusetts. Dawn is also a certified teacher for Search Inside Yourself, a leadership programme by SIYLI.
Through her work as a mindfulness teacher, Dawn has guided people of diverse backgrounds to reduce their stress levels and manage the symptoms of their insomnia. She has participated in advanced mindfulness research at NUS-Duke. In addition, she has volunteered for frontline support work with sexual assault victims through a women’s shelter and leading Dance and Movement and group therapy.
Above all else, Dawn encourages purposeful, passionate living. Whether she is working with youth or adults, she embraces one simple but powerful ethos: as long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you.
Dawn speaks fluent English and Mandarin.