My Story
The person behind the work
I grew up believing that marriage was supposed to be one of the central commitments of a life — not a backdrop, not an afterthought, not something you coast through. I've been married for 38 years, and I'll tell you plainly: it has not always been easy. That's not a disclaimer. That's my credential.
I found my way into officiating weddings through my ordination as a minister, and for many years, the work was largely ceremonial — helping couples design the moment they'd remember forever. I got very good at it. Divine Marriage Union grew into a thriving officiant service, and I have now stood at the front of over 500 wedding ceremonies across Savannah, Georgia and beyond. Through that vantage point, I began to see something that didn't sit easily with me: how little preparation most couples brought to the moment they were about to step into.
"I could tell the ceremony and make it beautiful. What I couldn't do was guarantee that the marriage would be. That gap is what led me here."
I pursued certification as a SYMBIS Facilitator — the most widely used pre-marital and marriage assessment program available — and then deepened that training through the Gottman Method, spending years learning the research that my own marriage had lived out empirically. I became a pre-marital counselor, then a broader marriage coach, working with both engaged couples building a foundation and established couples trying to rebuild one.
With over 20 years of corporate team leadership, public speaking, and Toastmasters experience, I honed the skill that has made me most effective as a facilitator: the ability to communicate — to make complex frameworks feel accessible, to hold space for tension without letting it collapse, and to ask the question that opens a conversation rather than ending one.
The Union Blueprint is the synthesis of everything — the 38 years of marriage, the 500+ ceremonies, the clinical training, and the communication skill — organized into a program that couples can actually complete, with outcomes they can actually see.
What also shapes this work is where I come from. I was born and raised in Switzerland, and immigrated to the United States in my early twenties — nearly forty years ago now. That journey, and the decades of travel across many countries and cultures that followed, gave me something that training alone cannot: a deep, lived understanding of how differently human beings are shaped by the world around them. I love observing people — how they connect, how they clash, how they love. What I've come to believe is this: love itself is universal and pure in its nature. It is the structure within which couples live — the cultural expectations, the unspoken rules, the inherited definitions of roles and conflict — that varies from culture to culture, and it is those structural differences that so often create the friction, the misunderstandings, and ultimately the break-ups we witness at an alarming rate.
I have had my own ups and downs in my marriage. I have failed myself and my spouse more than once. Time, my own lived experience, and years of study have taught me lessons I couldn't have learned any other way — and those lessons are the ones I most want to share. My deepest desire is to help couples see and truly feel the precious gift they have in each other. We live in a fragmented, fast-moving world — full of distractions, interruptions, and competing demands — and it makes navigating a marriage harder than it should be. When things get difficult, it can feel like all the love is gone. I genuinely believe it is only hidden. And I believe it can be rekindled with the right guidance and the right tools.
I work with two kinds of couples. First, those who are contemplating marriage and want to build a solid foundation before they commit. That is worth celebrating — because the challenges of marriage will come, sooner or later, for every couple. Choosing to prepare is one of the wisest investments two people can make. Second, I work with married couples who have recognized that something is off — maybe disagreements are escalating without resolution, maybe they feel distant from one another, unhappy, and unsure how to find their way back. That too deserves celebration, because it takes courage to look honestly at a relationship and decide to invest in it rather than walk away.
And not every relationship is in crisis. Many simply benefit from preventative care — a tuneup, a refresher, a shared language for staying close. I find it a beautiful privilege to do this work. Because relationships, at their core, start with two people choosing each other. And when that union is healthy and full, it doesn't stay contained — it spreads, like a fire rekindling, through families, communities, and the world around it. It is my vision that The Union Blueprint becomes a tool for that kind of healing, at every scale.
Let's connect. I look forward to knowing you — and letting you know me.
