Kintsugi Heroes
Catherine Robertson · 55 min
After a shattering personal crisis in 2012 forced her to confront everything she had built, Catherine Robertson spent eight years doing deep inner work before trading a 20-year pharmaceutical career for a calling to help others thrive — proving that the wound can become the way.
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Catherine Robertson came to Australia on a backpacking adventure in 1999 and stayed. For twenty years, she built a career in pharmaceutical sales that played to her strengths: she was good at connecting with people, trusted with autonomy, and paid to do what came naturally. By all measures, it was a success. But in 2012, something shattered. A personal crisis forced her to confront a truth she could no longer avoid, and she made the choice to look directly at what had broken rather than look away. That choice took courage she didn't know she had.
For eight years, Catherine stayed in corporate while doing deep inner work. She read widely, studied teachers like John Kabat-Zinn and Eckhart Tolle, and trusted an impulse she couldn't fully name. She wasn't waiting for permission or the perfect moment; she was following what felt true. When the pandemic hit and her manager needed someone to lead a meditation session, Catherine expected six people. Seventy showed up. That moment clarified what she had already become, even if she didn't yet know it professionally. When her pharmaceutical role was made redundant months later, the company hired her as a wellbeing consultant instead.
Today, Catherine helps people move from survival to thriving. She speaks plainly about burnout: the workplace contributes, but so do we, through habits and patterns we haven't examined. Real change requires looking inward, and it cannot happen alone. She names gratitude and stillness as tools that shift how we see our lives. Her hope for herself is simple: freedom from suffering. Her work is to help others find their way there too.
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Kintsugi Heroes · Registered Australian not-for-profit · kintsugiheroes.com.au ↗