Suzanne Cork (Robson) HH 1999 took a traditional route after leaving St Swithun’s and studied law at Bristol University. She secured a job at a top London law firm and subsequently found herself working hard in Monaco.

All was well until, at the age of 28, Suzanne discovered a lump in her abdomen. Tests showed it was an 11 cm fibroid in her uterus. As a result of this, Suzanne decided to reevaluate her life; she no longer wanted to be burning the candle at both ends.

She began to look into the underlying causes of her condition and was drawn towards two areas: yoga and nutrition. Her research and analytical skills from working in law helped her to define her new path.

First Suzanne decided to train as a Yogi and enrolled in an intensive, month-long course in Bali where she studied the physical and philosophical aspects of yoga, learnt about the mind-body connection and about stress and all its effects on a person. She is now
a 300+ hour Yoga Alliance certified yoga instructor.

In 2013 Suzanne qualified as a Health Coach with the Institute of Integrative Nutrition in New York, the largest nutrition school in the world. Living in Dubai at the time, she decided to run her first retreat the following year for men and women. It was a great success but after running a subsequent retreat which happened to be just women, she had such a sense of ‘sisterhood’ that she decided to focus her work solely on women after that.

Suzanne felt that women craved a safe environment in which to open up and be themselves with no barriers. Many women from different walks of life came together and shared their experiences openly and honestly.

Now based in the UK, Suzanne’s yoga retreats aren’t just a place for physical and emotional development as she includes a workshop to stimulate the mind too. Examples of previous workshops include leadership skills, essential oils and psychotherapy. Understandably, they have proven very popular.

In between these weekends, Suzanne also runs six week health coaching programmes based on her nutritional therapy knowledge.

Several years into her new life path and two very precious children later, Suzanne has now come full circle. Incredibly, she finds time to practice law on a consultancy basis and feels this is the perfect balance for her.

She remembers St Swithun’s fondly and loved being a weekly boarder in High House. She made many strong friendships during this time and felt she had a second family at school.

Suzanne’s first visit back to St Swithun’s recently was to help out at one of our Careers Speed Networking events - where representatives from different industries talk to students interested in those fields. She was amazed at the changes she saw, including the impressive Bramston Library where the careers evening took place.

Suzanne’s advice for the girls that evening was to find the thing that ‘lights you up’ as you are more likely to be good at the thing that excites you because of your innate passion for it.