SARA HABOUBI, MA (FIRST CLASS HONOURS), BSC
About Sara
NLP & Time Line Accredited Trainer (ANLP UK) | Master Coach | Co-Developer, Jumpstarting™ Learning Skills | International Speaker
For more than 24 years, Sara has worked with everyone from children and teenagers to corporate leaders and educators — turning complex neuroscience and behavioural psychology into practical, life-changing tools you can use immediately.
THE STORY
The brain that started it all
When Sara was 15, in her first term at boarding school, she made a decision.
She didn’t know she made it. Nobody told her. It just happened the way these things do, quietly, underneath everything, wiring itself into her nervous system like fact.
“The decision was this: being clever is unsafe.”
For the next 16 years, that decision ran her life. It derailed her academically, professionally, and in her relationships. She became an engineer and project manager, working in London, Malaysia and Thailand, and hated every minute of it. She hid behind her computer. She shrank herself down around others so they wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. She genuinely couldn’t see a way forward that felt like hers.
She had no idea any of this was happening.
Then, in 2002, in Bangkok, she had a single session with an NLP coach.
In one hour, she discovered the root of a pattern she’d been running for 16 years. And then she let it go. No months of therapy. No dredging up the past. Just clarity, a simple powerful technique, and a decision that finally, properly, changed.
She was so blown away she knew immediately, she had to learn how to do this for other people.
The journey that built Brain Zoo™
Sara trained as an NLP coach and then flew to Australia to complete her Master Practitioner and NLP Trainer certifications. She ran her first NLP training just ten days after qualifying.
She moved to Ireland, where she spent the next 20 years working with everyone from five-year-olds to 82-year-olds — children, teenagers, adults, families, schools, corporations, and open training programmes. In 2017 she co-developed Jumpstarting™ Learning Skills, a programme focused on learning difficulties that has since been delivered in 70+ schools and trained hundreds of educators and parents.
She earned a First Class Honours Master’s Degree in Adult Learning and Development, became an international speaker, and kept doing what she’d always done — looking for what she could learn or develop that would help people take genuine control of their own lives.
Over the course of that journey, one thing became undeniable: the biggest barrier people face isn’t lack of skill, lack of effort, or lack of intelligence. It’s not knowing how their brain actually works under pressure.
Brain Zoo™ is the answer to that.
What Brain Zoo™ is really about
Every framework Sara has ever built comes back to the same insight she had in that Bangkok session in 2002 — that we are all running programmes we didn’t consciously choose, and that once you can SEE the programme, you can change it.
Brain Zoo™ takes that insight and makes it accessible to everyone. Not just people in one-to-one coaching. Not just people who can afford years of therapy. Everyone — professionals, students, parents, entire organisations — because everyone has a brain, and everyone’s brain has animals running the show in ways they’ve never been introduced to.
That’s the work. That’s always been the work.
CREDENTIALS & BACKGROUND
Credentials & experience
Accreditations & Degrees
- ✓ MA First Class Honours in Adult Learning and Development
- ✓ NLP & Time Line Accredited Trainer, ANLP UK
- ✓ Master Coach — NLP, Time Line & Hypnotherapy
- ✓ mBraining Coach
- ✓ Energetic NLP Coach
- ✓ Motivational Interviewing Practitioner
- ✓ 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens Facilitator
Track Record & Reach
- ✓ Co-Developer, Jumpstarting™ Learning Skills
- ✓ 24 years of continuous coaching practice
- ✓ 2,000+ people coached worldwide
- ✓ 70+ schools trained
- ✓ 20+ NLP programmes delivered
- ✓ International speaker
- ✓ Worked across Thailand, Malaysia, Australia, Ireland, UK, and UAE
Ready to meet your brain?
Whatever brings you here — pressure at work, challenges at home, a student who’s struggling, a team that needs better tools — Brain Zoo™ has a way in for you.