Nige' Ollis

My Story

After emerging from the car crash of my dysfunctional family and challenging school environment, I walked into the foothills of a career as a Construction Project Surveyor and, combined with my parallel sporting aspirations, lived an extremely successful yet busy and hectic life for 15 years, before the constant push and pull and a particularly dramatic viral assault led to thorough burnout.

After the slow climb from that place – where I learned a great deal about life with a new sense of perspective and priorities – I then embarked upon my next mistake: turning my much loved hobby of photography into a business. The fallout was such that for almost the entire following decade – from the late 90’s to the late 00’s – I barely took an image in anger, my darkroom began to attract dust measurable in layers, and I began referring to my photography entirely in the past tense.

However, all that changed with my conversion to the digital medium – buoyed from the enthusiasm of having one of my images being in Tate Modern and Tate Britain in the summer/autumn of 2008. As a result, I began producing images that entirely eclipsed my earlier work; the intervening decade and its allied maturity seemingly providing the catalyst for new ways of seeing the world around me; the passion and enthusiasm for the medium came flooding back. [If you’re curious you can view my dedicated photography website here.]

Somewhere along the way a curious series of fatefully aligned events saw me offered a temporary, part-time post at a local high school. I stayed for 16 years, evolving into a position where I began teaching English as an Additional Language, and working alongside the school’s counsellor [who would often suggest I had ‘missed my calling’] supporting the vulnerable pupils – genuinely the most memorable, wholly unplanned and rewarding periods of my life. Then, following some significant changes, which saw the school swallowed up by an academy trust, I took what will be my final leap of faith into retraining as a therapeutic coach.

I’m now passionate, in gathering all the wisdom I’ve accumulated along the way, to continue helping others on their own life journeys. And I look forward to the possibility of welcoming my in-person clients to the newly built The Therapy Pod.