Our Dual Purpose
Our mission is to make emotional safety approachable by offering tools, insights, and support that help people understand, manage, and embrace their emotions.
BrainHug is grounded in a shared vision:
To create emotionally safe, resilient communities by helping people understand their brains, regulate emotions, and thrive.
We do this through two connected pathways:
BrainHug Charitable Trust and BrainHug Solutions
Each playing a unique but complementary role.
BrainHug Charitable Trust
The Trust focuses on system-level change.
We provide inclusive, high-quality, and culturally respectful tools, resources, and professional development grounded in neuroscience. Our mission is to empower schools, educators, whānau, and communities to build consistent, trauma-informed, neurodiverse-aware, and resilience-focused emotional regulation practices. BrainHug Trust also works behind the scenes to support sustainable, long-term change.
BrainHug Solutions
Solutions is the individual, private support arm of our work.
Here, we walk alongside families and young people offering personalised emotional regulation plans, mentoring, and practical strategies that build connection and grow resilience in everyday life.
Rooted in the same research and values, Solutions provides young people and their whānau accessible resources an genuine opportunities to feel seen, understood, and supported.
BrainHug's founder
Tēnā koutou katoa
Kō Emma toku ingoa,
Nō Whakatū ahau
Emma Hunter, Whakatū, Nelson, NZ
I am a New Zealand teacher, researcher, and Deputy Principal with over 20 years of experience across primary, intermediate, college, and alternative education settings.
As the founder of BrainHug, I am passionate about turning brain science into easy-to-understand tools for classrooms, homes and communities. Through storytelling and accessible visuals, I help make the brain feel less like a mystery and more like an ecosystem - something we can learn about, care for, and protect.
I draw on the beauty and wisdom of Aotearoa’s native bush. Just as we are kaitiaki of our forests, we can learn to be kaitiaki of our own brains - building strong foundations of self-awareness, emotional regulation, and resilience.
A resilient ecosystem weathers storms and bounces back. In the same way, by tending to our internal landscapes, we help our tamariki and communities grow the resilience needed to thrive in an ever-changing world.
I hold a Master’s degree in Educational leadership with a focus on school attendance, and I am currently completing a PhD exploring how trauma-informed, neuroscience-aligned leadership can support wellbeing and engagement across communities. My mission is to grow a shared language of hauora - empowering us all to connect, regulate, and flourish together.
