The People Behind Your Certification.
Every hour of your Unify Academy training is delivered by educators who are active, practicing instructors. Not administrators. Not guest lecturers. People who teach the method every week — and who have built their careers on the same standard they are asking you to meet.
Between them, McKenzie and Kelly bring decades of combined teaching experience, multiple certifications across methodologies, and a shared belief that the best instructors never stop learning. When you train at Unify Academy, you learn from people who are still students themselves — and proud of it.
Founder · Lead Educator
McKenzie
STOTT Certified — Rehabilitation and Performance
We all had day one.
McKenzie is a former international competitive figure skater, STOTT-certified Pilates instructor with a specialization in rehabilitation and performance, and the founder of Unify Pilates — a Canadian Choice Award-winning studio. She built the Academy because the standard she holds for teaching deserves to be passed on. Not the textbook version. The real version — shaped by twelve years of elite sport, decades of personal practice, and a career spent learning what actually works in the human body and why.
She still teaches every week. The Academy was not handed off to a curriculum team. It was built by the person who runs the studio and knows exactly what an exceptional Pilates instructor needs to be able to do on day one of their career.
Twelve years on the ice. A lifetime of understanding what the body costs.
McKenzie grew up competing nationally and internationally as a figure skater. For twelve years, elite sport was her world — the discipline, the precision, the demand that every movement be deliberate and efficient. She retired from professional skating in 2022, but the education sport gave her in performance, load, and the relationship between strength and longevity never left. It became the lens through which she sees every client, every exercise, and every instructor she trains.
“The injury I thought would end everything became my turning point. A torn hip labrum while skating professionally forced me to slow down. To step away from pushing through pain and learn to move with intention. Pilates showed me what true strength feels like. Precision over force. Longevity over hustle. Awareness over ego. It rebuilt my foundation and reshaped how I see the body. There is always another way forward.”
From the reformer as a patient — to the reformer as a calling.
Pilates entered McKenzie's life as rehabilitation — used alongside her skating career for injury prevention and the kind of deep structural strength that high-performance sport demands and rarely teaches you how to build. The turning point came with her hip. When the reformer gave her back something she thought she had lost — strength without pain, movement without fear — the question shifted from “how is this helping me” to “why does this work, and how do I give this to other people.”
That question took her deep. She studied across disciplines and across countries — including the original Joseph Pilates studio in New York — not to collect certifications, but to understand the method from every angle it offered. She wanted to know what held across all of it. What was fundamental. What actually worked in real studios, with real bodies, over real time. She found it. And she brought it back to build something with it.
What McKenzie brings to the room.
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STOTT certified
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Specialization in rehabilitation and performance — the two ends of the client spectrum the method serves best.
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12 years elite sport
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National and international competitive figure skating. A deep understanding of performance, precision, and longevity.
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Studied globally
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Across disciplines and countries — including the original Joseph Pilates studio in New York.
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Canadian Choice Award
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Founder of an award-winning studio. Proof the method works at scale, with real people, over real time.
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What McKenzie believes.
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Precision over force.
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The body responds to intelligent movement — not volume, not intensity, not ego. Teaching someone to move well is a more profound intervention than pushing them harder.
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Longevity over hustle.
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A career in Pilates instruction should last decades. A client’s relationship with their body should last a lifetime. Both are built the same way.
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Teach to serve. Not to impress.
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The instructor’s body is not the point. The client’s body is. Every decision in the room exists to serve the person in front of you.
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There is always another way forward.
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Pain is not a full stop. Injury is not an ending. McKenzie has lived this — and she teaches every instructor she trains to hold this belief for every client they will ever work with.
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Co-Creator · Master Trainer
Kelly
Balanced Body Certified · National Pilates Certification (NPCP)
Still Learning. Still going Deeper
Kelly has been teaching Pilates for over a decade — in group studios, in private practice, and now in the training room where she helps the next generation of instructors understand not just what to teach, but why. She brings to every training day exactly what she brings to every client session: clarity, warmth, and a genuine investment in what the person in front of her is capable of.
She holds a National Pilates Certification, four Balanced Body certifications across mat, reformer, chair, and cadillac, and she is currently deepening her own education with an advanced focus on biomechanics, fascia, and movement variability. She is not revisiting what she already knows. She is rebuilding her understanding of it at a higher level. That is the standard she models for every trainee at Unify Academy.
A career change that became a calling.
Kelly first found Pilates in 2012 at a small private studio — and from her very first session, something locked in. The way it challenged the body while building a deeper, more intentional relationship with movement was unlike anything she had experienced before. She filed it away. Life in the aviation industry continued.
In 2018 she came back — this time looking for strength, balance, and a body that felt capable rather than just functional. What started as a personal commitment evolved quickly. Within that same year she completed her Balanced Body certifications across four apparatus. In 2019 she earned her National Pilates Certification. Shortly after, she left her career in travel entirely and never looked back.
“What started as a personal commitment quickly became a career and a calling. Pilates has made me stronger, healthier, and more capable than I ever expected — and I want that for every person I teach.”
Kelly is also a mother of three. She mentions this not as a credential, but as context: Pilates is not a professional exercise for her. It is the foundation she stands on every single day — as an instructor, as an educator, and as a person. When she talks about what the method does for a body and a life, she is speaking from the inside.
The instructor who makes you understand — not just perform.
Kelly’s greatest passion is education. Not the delivery of information, but the moment when a trainee genuinely understands — when the anatomy clicks, when the cueing lands, when they stop copying the exercise and start teaching it. That moment is what she builds every training session around.
Her approach sits at the intersection of classical Pilates and contemporary movement science. She honours the fundamentals because they hold — and she evolves her understanding of them alongside advances in how we understand the body. Her training sessions are precise, rigorous, and genuinely encouraging. She builds confidence not by lowering the bar, but by showing trainees exactly how to meet it.
“I want instructors to understand not just what to teach — but why. When you understand the why, you can serve any client, in any condition, on any day.”
What Kelly brings to the room.
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National Pilates Certification (NPCP)
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Earned in 2019 — one of the most rigorous industry-recognised credentials available to Pilates instructors.
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Balanced Body certified
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Mat, Reformer, Chair, and Cadillac — a comprehensive multi-apparatus foundation completed in 2018.
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Advanced biomechanics focus
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Currently deepening her Mat certification with a focus on biomechanics, fascia, movement variability, and adaptability.
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Broad teaching background
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Group studio and private practice across a wide range of clients, movement goals, and needs. Over a decade in the room.
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What Kelly believes.
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Understand the why.
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Knowing the exercise is not enough. Understanding why it exists — what it asks of the body, what it builds, what it protects — is what separates an instructor who can teach from one who can truly serve.
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Classical principles. Contemporary science.
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The original method is brilliant. Modern movement science makes it even more powerful. Kelly teaches at the intersection of both — not choosing between tradition and evolution, but using each to deepen the other.
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Confidence is built, not assumed.
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Every trainee has something to learn and something to offer. Kelly’s job is to make both visible — and to create the conditions where real confidence, the kind that holds up on day one of your career, can actually grow.
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Learning never stops.
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Kelly is still a student — deliberately. She believes the instructors who stay curious are the ones who build careers that last. She teaches that belief as much as she teaches Pilates.
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