Amanda L. Neiley

Founder of StillGrounded Labs & Creator of Return

Amanda Neiley is the founder of StillGrounded Labs and creator of the Return to North™ framework, a practical approach that helps high-capacity women and leaders recognize where they are, understand what they need, and make more intentional choices before stress becomes depletion.
 
With more than two decades of experience in education and leadership, Amanda has worked as a teacher, vice-principal, and school principal. She holds an Honours Bachelor of Physical Education in Kinesiology, a Bachelor of Education, and a Master of Education, with additional qualifications in leadership, special education, and Indigenous education.
 
Her work has evolved through many seasons of her own life: raising children, navigating divorce, supporting family, stepping into demanding leadership roles, continuing her education, and training for endurance events, including completing an Ironman. During one particularly intense season, years of pushing, achieving, and carrying too much culminated in significant physical depletion and a lengthy period of recovery. She knew she did not want to give up the things that mattered to her. She wanted to learn how to do them differently.
 
That experience changed the way Amanda understood strength. Endurance training had once taught her to follow the plan no matter what. Recovery taught her to listen. She learned that rest was not laziness, boundaries were not selfish, and sustainable strength required working with her body rather than continually overriding it.
 
Her years in school leadership reinforced the same lesson. When a parent, student, or staff member was struggling, Amanda learned to look beyond the immediate behaviour and ask a different question: What else might be happening here, and what does this person need? That curiosity now sits at the heart of Return to North™.
 
The framework began through simple tools Amanda created around breathing, pausing, and emotional regulation, first for adults and later for children through her Calm Compass work. Over time, she recognized a larger theme: the practices that helped most were the ones that helped people return to themselves.
Amanda’s work is not about being calm all the time or escaping a demanding life. It is about helping women build enough awareness, self-trust, and self-compassion to notice what they need, create healthy boundaries, and develop sustainable ways of caring for themselves while continuing to pursue meaningful lives and ambitious goals.
 
As a mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, and leader, Amanda believes caring deeply for others and caring for yourself are not competing priorities. She has learned that when women protect their own capacity, they have more of themselves available for the people and work they love.
 
Through StillGrounded Labs, Amanda is developing books for adults and children, courses, podcasts, workshops, speaking opportunities, and practical tools based on the Return to North™ framework. Her long-term vision includes giving back to schools and communities and helping make well-being something women feel empowered to prioritize rather than apologize for.