Kirstin holds a post-graduate diploma in Education. After many years of teaching in secondary schools and teaching English as an additional language, Kirstin merged her love for education and working with horses when she became a human/horse interaction facilitator working with people with additional needs and children from socio-economic disadvantaged areas. Within this role, she aimed to improve the social and emotional well being of her service users through ground work with horses. She undertook a research project looking at the benefits of this work on the emotional intelligence of children and presented her findings at the 2018 HETI Congress in Dublin.