Principal and Academic Lead · co-founder
Vaida Borunovienė
“I spent twenty years in international business and burnout ended it. What I needed then did not exist: a practitioner trained to work with it, within a safe boundary. This programme is that training.”
From pressure, strength
More than twenty years in international business, in demanding commercial roles, ended the way it does for many people: not with a decision but with exhaustion. Burnout closed that career and opened this one. Vaida requalified in the study model this institute now uses — structured self-study, a personal tutor, assessed work — and holds a BSc (Honours) from The Open University.
In Kaunas she built a practice, Sportas ir psichologija, that joins sport science, psychology and public-health promotion: programmes for organisations on recognising burnout and managing load and recovery, masterclasses on the physiology of stress and recovery, and individual recovery and running programmes. She is a lifelong runner, and her own daily practice is the first thing she asks of every student.
What she is accountable for
The curriculum
The programme architecture — one phenomenon, four contexts, four method families, the clinical boundary as the axis — is hers. She owns it and signs it.
The standard
Assessment rubrics, the marking workflow, tutor development and the observed examination at Residency 2. One person accountable for quality, by name.
The foundations
She teaches the two foundation courses herself: what burnout is and is not, and the boundary, scope, referral and safeguarding course every student must pass before leading a single practice.
The residencies
Both weeks in Kaunas are led by her, with the method tutors and the examination panel.
Wellbeing and safeguarding
Any concern about a student or a practice participant comes to her, and where needed to the clinical adviser — never left with a tutor alone.
Faculty
She recruits the method-family tutors and the clinical adviser, and leads every conversation with a prospective tutor. Teach with us.
How she teaches
Plainly. She has sat on the student side of the model this programme uses and knows what makes it work: a tutor who reads your work and writes feedback you can act on, a calendar that does not move, and a standard that is published before you are judged against it.
Her rule for the programme is the same as her rule for her own practice: say exactly what you do, do not do what you are not trained for, and refer the moment a line is crossed. It is why the scope statement sits on the front page of this site and not in the small print.
Writing to Vaida
Prospective students write to [email protected]; prospective faculty to [email protected]. Both reach her.