Career Evolution Coach · Founder of Root & Rise
“Women do not have to choose between a career and the life they want.”
Our partners
“it takes a village to raise a child.”
I think the same is true for women. We do not have to walk alone. On every stretch of the road, it is precious to have people who understand us well enough, stay close enough, and bring different perspectives to look back, to support us and to keep going together.
At the gracespace, we have partners who bring their own expertise, experience and perspective, to shape spaces and journeys that fit your own story.
click on each person to read her story
Annie’s story
Annie Phan
Career Evolution Coach · Founder of Root & Rise
Annie once believed a good career was a fairly clear road: study, find a steady job, move up step by step, and keep striving to become better.
But life took Annie to a different turning very early. While studying for her Master’s in Japan, Annie went through a miscarriage, and that event made her stop before a very big choice: continue down the academic path, or step back to look after her health and give herself the chance to become a mother.
Three years later, when she finally had her child, Annie knew she wanted to be truly present in that journey of motherhood.
But then Annie realised that being a mother and having a career she loved at the same time was not as simple as she had once thought. She went back to corporate work, and on paper, everything was fine. But amid the deadlines, the long meetings, the exhaustion and the feeling of never having enough time for her child, Annie began to wonder whether this was how she wanted to live in the long run.
By 2020, when the pandemic and lockdown made those questions clearer, Annie decided to leave her corporate job and begin building a new career path.
With no safe route and no “perfect plan”, Annie started by building her own Virtual Assistant work, which gradually grew into two businesses that could run in a way that fits her life better. That journey gave Annie a very real experience of creating freedom for herself rather than waiting for someone to hand it to her.
“Women do not have to choose between a career and the life they want.”
That has become the foundation of how Annie sees careers today. For her, a good career path is not necessarily the fastest route to promotion, but one that can grow and change with you, with enough room for the other things that matter in life.
Today, Annie walks alongside women standing at a turning point in their careers — perhaps when their current job no longer fits, when they want to build a more independent direction, or simply when they realise they want to work in a different way. Together with them, Annie looks back at the values, strengths and wishes of each stage, to find a career path that is meaningful and has room for the life they truly want to live.
Psychologist · Relationship Coach · Circle Facilitator
“Love is something that needs to be learned, too.”
Thuỷ’s story
Thuỷ Nguyễn
Psychologist · Relationship Coach · Circle Facilitator
Thuỷ came to relationship work not only through professional knowledge, but through a very personal journey of her own in love and marriage. Before becoming a Relationship Coach, Thuỷ also believed that if she understood herself enough, loved herself enough and chose the right person, a good relationship would naturally become a good one. But a few years after marriage, Thuỷ and her partner also entered a period of crisis — when both began to feel lonely, distant, and not truly understood by each other.
Looking back at her own relationship, Thuỷ realised that we often step into love with a great many wishes, but with far too little knowledge of how to build a bond that lasts. Each person brings experiences from their family, old wounds, and very different needs and ways of reacting. Wounds that seem long past can still be awakened in a relationship close enough. And sometimes, what pulls two people apart is not that they no longer love each other, but that they have not yet learned to see and connect with what is really happening beneath the conflicts.
“Love is something that needs to be learned, too.”
Realising this changed how Thuỷ saw love, and also opened a new path in her work. Instead of only looking for ways to “fix” a relationship when there is a problem, Thuỷ became more interested in what lies underneath: how each person understands themselves, how they bond and communicate, how they face hurt, and how they create a sense of safety together in the relationship.
From her own experience, Thuỷ went deeper into this field, completing a Master’s in Psychology at the University of Essex, becoming a Certified Thriving Relationship Coach at the Center for Thriving Relationships and studying Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) at the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy. She has also spent many years building community and creating spaces where women can connect, share and look more deeply into themselves.
Today, Thuỷ walks alongside women going through tangles in love and marriage — from conflict, distance, loneliness and lost connection, to hurts that have not yet been named. Thuỷ does not give an answer about whether a relationship should continue or end. She creates a space safe enough for each person to see things more clearly, understand herself more deeply, and find the calm and steadiness to choose what is right for her.
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