I grew up just outside Bergen, Norway, on a small island surrounded by a fjord, snow capped mountains and the greenest fields you can imagine thanks to a substantial yearly rainfall. Growing up surrounded by such natural beauty has influenced me greatly. As the oldest of three children I was first in line to take over my family’s dairy farm, but my desire to learn another language fluently and experience other cultures, brought me to Los Angeles , CA as an au-pair after graduating high school. Being submerged in a language certainly expedites the process of learning it, and even though I had been taught English since 4th grade, it was a whole different matter to communicate with native speakers 24-7. This experience increased my desire to learn more about the English language, and I returned to Norway and took a one-year course in English at Bergen Teacher Training College. Part of the curriculum there consisted of 3 months of student teaching, and that’s where I discovered that I was more concerned with the student and what was hindering him or her from learning, than what we were teaching them.

A natural next step was to move from teaching training to study psychology at North Park University in Chicago, IL. While studying psychology I found myself fascinated by studies on children, specifically how they learn. My professors urged me to get my masters in social work or psychology, but marriage and children put my plans on hold for the time being.

We just spent a year in Norway, in order for our children to go to school there and learn the language, and I spent most of the year teaching but I also translated some Organizational Leadership articles from English to Norwegian.