Our story
About Let's Be Real
Where education, mental health, and authentic connection meet
Let's Be Real was created from a shared belief that many young people are surrounded by information yet still lack safe, meaningful opportunities to talk about what they are experiencing. By combining expertise in international education leadership, systemic coaching, and Mental Health First Aid training, we help schools and families build cultures where wellbeing conversations become practical, confident, and real.
Most schools want to do better on student mental health. Few have a clear framework for how.
Wellbeing initiatives tend to live in posters, assemblies, and one-off training days. They rarely give staff a shared language, a clear escalation pathway, or the confidence to respond when a student is struggling in front of them.
We started Let's Be Real because we saw this gap from both sides of it.
How we got here.
Nick was a school principal in Frankfurt for eight years. Jacqueline was a parent at the school, a coach, and someone who'd been thinking about what real mental health support inside a school community could look like.
A conversation in Nick's office turned into a question worth answering: what would it take for a school to genuinely respond to mental health, not just talk about it?
The answer became Let's Be Real. We work with international schools across Europe to build the literacy, structures, and confidence that make mental health support part of how a school actually operates.
What we do
Our work centres on Youth Mental Health Response, a three-tier programme that gives staff a shared framework for what to NOTICE, how to HOLD a conversation, and when to LEAD a referral. It is practical, repeatable, and designed to outlast the people who first bring it into a school.
Alongside this, we support schools with parent engagement, staff development, and the harder strategic conversations about where wellbeing sits in a school's priorities.
Why us?
Nick spent eight years inside school leadership, which means he understands what schools can and cannot absorb, and what gets dropped when calendars fill up. Jacqueline brings the coaching and family perspective that keeps the work grounded in real conversations, not frameworks for their own sake.
We are not a wellbeing brand. We are two people building something we think schools genuinely need.
Take the first step
Ready to make a difference in your school community? Explore our mental health literacy work or get in touch to get started.