Career Spotlight – with Amy McAuley

Amy McAuley is a resilience speaker, Mental Health First Aid Trainer, life coach and founder of Positive Pants, with more than 20 years’ experience in coaching, personal development and wellbeing.

But much of what Amy teaches today hasn’t come from a textbook. It has come from life.

Her journey has included overcoming alcohol addiction and reaching 15 years of sobriety, experiencing postnatal depression, supporting her family through difficult times, being diagnosed with Stage 3 HER2-positive breast cancer, undergoing chemotherapy, radiation and a bilateral mastectomy, and later experiencing a significant mental health breakdown that required inpatient care.

Rather than seeing these experiences as things that define her, Amy uses them to deepen the work she does.

Her message is not about pretending life is always positive. It is about learning how to keep moving when life isn’t.

Today, Amy combines lived experience with professional training to deliver engaging talks and workshops on resilience, mental health, positive workplace culture and emotional wellbeing. As a Mental Health First Aid Trainer, she is passionate about breaking down stigma and helping people feel more confident having conversations about mental health and supporting someone who may be struggling.

She is also the creator of Positive Pants, an initiative built around positivity, kindness, resilience and practical tools people can use in everyday life.

Amy’s approach is warm, energetic, down-to-earth and real. She speaks openly about the difficult chapters of her life without allowing them to become the whole story.

Her philosophy is simple: resilience isn’t about never falling apart. Sometimes it is about discovering that you can rebuild — again and again.

Amy now uses her experiences to help others recognise their own strength, have better conversations about mental health and believe that, whatever chapter they may currently be living through, it doesn’t have to be the end of their story.