I started The Barn after years of travelling the world running corporate workshops. Somewhere along the way I became convinced that hotels and boardrooms just don’t give people what they actually need to do their best thinking.
I started The Barn after years of travelling the world running corporate workshops. Somewhere along the way I became convinced that hotels and boardrooms just don’t give people what they actually need to do their best thinking.
Real clarity — the kind that untangles complex, messy decisions — needs space. It needs people off their devices, out of back-to-back meetings, and back in touch with something simpler. Fresh air, big views, a fire to sit around, good food on the table. That’s what actually gets people into the same headspace and genuinely understanding each other, not just sitting through another agenda.
The Barn was built from that belief, quite literally, using timber grown right here on the farm and drawing on US and Japanese design principles — natural light everywhere, the building settling into the landscape rather than sitting on top of it. Every step of the build has had friends, family and my kids involved in some way. It’s a passion project, and the reward has always been in the experiences it creates for the people who come through.
Alongside The Barn, I work as a strategy lead for some of the world’s top advisory firms, doing advisory work, corporate planning, culture design and strategy for major companies and government bodies internationally. I love that work, and I love bringing the insight from hundreds of boardrooms — all that tension between value and risk — back to what we do here.
My favourite part of The Barn is the quiet bookends of the day: sunrise walks along the forest trail past the waterholes, and evenings winding down in the bath with a good gin and tonic, a dash of local plants and leaves stirred through.