A few years ago I decided to leave a successful career of Pastry Arts behind to pursue a new calling, a career in mental health. I have been fortunate enough to have spent more than a decade traveling around the world, as well as various Canadian provinces, cooking, baking, and learning an abundance of life skills. This has allowed me to learn about culture, and diversity as well as acquire skills allowing me to rapidly adjust to change. I believe an understanding of culture and diversity is critical in a future in counseling and I will be able to apply my vast experiences of human nature to a career in mental health. I have built my life around a philosophy of empathy, support and non-judgement, and I hope to use this ideology as a guide to help others and build strong professional relationships. I value curiosity and kindness and both have afforded me the ability to open people up, while at the same time, putting them at ease. I believe a career in mental health would enable me to demonstrate my breadth of interpersonal skills gained over years of being in fast-paced, stressful, dynamic team-environments. I greatly admire the counseling principles that mental health practitioners employ, including the efforts counselors make to incorporate collaboration, development, wellness and multiculturalism into their therapeutic goals. I am looking forward to contributing to this movement towards a more inclusive, supportive and stigma-free future.