Meet the Trainers
Cath Brown
Cath brings a fresh approach to coaching and training by combining nearly two decades of working with companies and individuals, initially as a practising barrister and, more recently, as coach, trainer and facilitator.
She employs a collaborative and conversational style which allows delegates to stop and think and gives them the time and space in which they can express themselves, explore new ideas and develop their skills.
As a coach and a barrister, she also seen what goes wrong when leaders are not trained. This can range from an unwillingness or inability to delegate to bad atmospheres within teams; from failure to retain staff to failure to develop staff and benefit from their full potential.
She passionately believes that the principles of brilliant leadership are simple and that you can learn them and then practise them. This course will help you do just that!
Cath St Leger
Cath is a dedicated learning and development professional who discovered her passion for learning and development more than two decades ago in the finance sector. Her journey began with delivering inductions, but she rapidly progressed, constantly evolving her skills and capabilities.
With a deep-rooted passion for personal development, Cath is committed to helping individuals become the best versions of themselves. Her extensive experience in coaching and mentoring, combined with a degree in Psychology and Philosophy, makes her a powerful resource for individuals and organisations alike. Cath can engage in meaningful conversations, guiding people to explore their inner selves and overcome obstacles that may be holding them back.
Cath’s journey has been marked by a diverse career both in and out of the field of learning and development, this includes roles as an Independent Celebrant, Personal Development Specialist, Head Of HR and Learning and Development Manager across the finance, automotive and retail sectors. Her commitment to personal development and empowering others continues to be a driving force in her work, making her a valuable asset in the field.
Dan Masters
Dan is a development consultant who has supported individuals, teams and organisations to evolve and improve results for over 18 years.
His background is a blend of consultancy, management responsibility and specialist technical roles. Beginning his career in banking, Dan then headed up the Training & Competence function within the UK’s largest Building Society. Becoming a Learning and Development Consultant in 2005, he has since worked with clients in the UK and overseas, including; Lidl GB, HM Treasury, Lloyds Banking Group, Co-op Retail, Royal College of Surgeons, Barclays, O2 Telefonica, Credit Suisse, Worldpay, Merck, TYCO, Admiral Insurance, Securitas, ITV and Itelligence.
Dan’s passions are leadership and management, high-performing teams and soft skills. He is equally at home developing senior leaders as he is designing and facilitating workshops for managers and colleagues at operational levels. Dan has significant experience in creating leadership programmes aligned to both CMI and ILM standards, as well as bespoke leadership support for organisations of all sizes.
Dan is an MBA candidate, a CMI Chartered Manager, Strengthscope® Master Practitioner, Belbin Team Roles Accredited, a certified TetraMap facilitator and an Engage Accredited Coach. He describes his style as experiential, inclusive, pragmatic and results-focused.
David Cotton
David has worked in training and development for over 20 years, working in four continents and nearly 50 countries. His work ranges from one to one coaching to managing multinational training programmes and his clients range from small family businesses to the European Commission, United Nations and Middle Eastern petrochemical companies. He is the author of around a dozen books and many journal articles. He is also a qualified and practising hypnotherapist and NLP practitioner. He spent 21 years with the major professional services firms, Arthur Andersen and PricewaterhouseCoopers, before becoming an independent trainer, coach, facilitator and speaker in 2002.
A former professional musician, David still occasionally performs and he collects instruments from around the world on his travels. He is the author of several books including 'Managing Difficult People At Work' and 'The Business Strategy Toolkit'.
Dorinda Nartey
Meet Dorinda, a leadership development coach and consultant with a wealth of experience within the clinical research and STEM industries. She develops and delivers workshops and training programmes that supports inclusive leadership and diversity. She enjoys working with organisations keen to understand the business case for diversity and recognise the social responsibility they hold in creating a unique EDI strategy.
In some of her workshops, she has the privilege of supporting diverse teams in creating a collaborative and supportive work culture where everyone feels respected, trusted to contribute and valued for their input.
Dorinda is passionate about understanding the psychology of people and in particular aims to help others find meaning and movement in challenging circumstances. She brings her expertise and lived experiences as a Black Woman in encouraging gender and racial diversity and empowering women to own their power in leadership pursuits.
She is an accredited Senior Practitioner Coach with the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) and has completed a programme on Diversity Equity and Inclusion Strategies for Business Impact from University of Cambridge Judge Business School. As a coach, her style is to stay encouraging, open and curious; yet challenging current mindsets, beliefs and values that might be getting in the way of you or your organisation's continual success.
Emma Walker-Cotton
Emma is an award winning trainer specialising in leadership development. She has over 20 years' experience of training design and delivery in both the public and private sector, including working as a director for a large housing association and for Amnesty International.
Emma is passionate about individuals having the opportunity to fulfil their potential and creates a positive, fun and stimulating learning environment. She always ensures that participants leave the day with practical skills they can use in their organisation. Emma has an MSc in Organisational Psychology and is qualified in running Psychometrics through the British Psychological Society.
Heather Baker FInstAM
Following 22 years as a secretary and then PA, Heather started training in 2000 to inspire PAs, EAs and administrators to excel. She travels the world enabling Office Professionals to find ways to work efficiently and effectively leading to the success of their organisations. As well as PA/EA masterclasses, she offers Administrative Workshops, Minute Taking, Business Writing and Speedwriting training; groups or one to ones. All her session are offered online too.
She is the author of four Amazon top ten selling books, a certified NLP practitioner, winner of numerous local and national awards and the creator of the BakerWrite speedwriting system. Her training programmes are CPD certified and endorsed by the Institute of Administrative Management.
She is a proud supporter of Isipho Admin in South Africa, a Prince's Trust business mentor and a Fellow of the Institute of Administrative Management.
Heather Wright
Heather has spent over 20 years inspiring people to change their lives for the better in huge and tiny ways.
She has spent years studying the neuro-psychology of behaviour and influence, and uses this information as well as her highly entertaining style to be the catalyst to inspire and deliver results in individuals, teams and organisations. Heather converts years of research and experience into usable, teachable material to change the habits and behaviours of others. She is a skilled facilitator and an expert on performance and achieving tangible results. She uses humour to relax people and has a plethora of tools and techniques which she uses to capture innovation and resourcefulness they didn’t think they possessed.
Heather is a captivating speaker delivering training to public services and large multinational companies in the UK, Europe, Africa and Australia. She has achieved an excellent reputation for her professionalism and accessibility when working with clients and she has enough energy to run a small power station. She designed, hosted and delivered the key note speeches for many organisations including Boots Opticians, Rolls Royce, Jaguar Land Rover, The National Trust and Pepsi Lipton International.
James Perryman
James has built up his experience over 20+ years working with organisations across many sectors including telecommunications, travel, insurance, banking and FMCG. His work spans the range and diversity of a typical business, running leadership and talent development programmes, providing 1:1 coaching and business consultancy. He is passionate about bringing clarity, direction and a sense of purpose to individuals, teams and organisations – all aimed at helping people and organisations grow and become better for themselves and their customers.
He is regularly invited to guest speak at events, often asked to share his expertise on people's natural behavioural and communication styles, and provide valuable ways in which people can adapt their own style to engage audiences when presenting, and win business when pitching.
James holds a number of qualifications in project management, emotional intelligence, behavioural and personality type tools, and is a professional member of the Professional Speakers Association.
Joanne Spencer
Meet Joanne. She has been working in the change management and transformation space for over 30 years and specialises in working with individuals, teams and organisations to maximise potential and enable continuous and sustainable improvements and growth.
She developed her insight and experience by working with a wide range of organisations within the Private Sector, including retail, banking, automotive, technology, the Public Sector including NHS, Central and Local Government and also works extensively within the Charity Sector.
Her experience as an NLP Master Practitioner, Programme Manager, facilitator and experienced coach in such varied and complex organisations gave her a taste for personal and professional development, and it's a passion that has stayed with her ever since!
Larry Reynolds
Larry is our courageous conversations expert. He develops managers in a wide variety of organisations in both the private and public sector – recent clients include Bolton NHS, Cambridge University, Johnson & Johnson, London Borough of Hackney, Tetra Pak and Torus Housing. Our course participants love Larry's energy, knowledge, and practical approach to management and leadership.
Lorna Hudson
Lorna is one of the leading Personal Marketing experts in the UK today. She started her career in brand marketing and sales by joining the graduate marketing scheme at Cadbury, before moving to Cussons. In 2000, Lorna moved into personal branding and communication driven by an interest in how individuals can learn to present themselves and the payback that can be achieved from getting this right. She now has a thriving business called Individual Impact. Her direct, dynamic and engaging style has energised over several thousand individuals.
Mike Garde
Mike has worked as an I.T. Consultant for over 20 years but had over 34 years in the I.T. industry in total as a software engineer.
In 2020 he also trained as a transformational coach, which means he's not just passionate about the technology but also about the people that use it. He loves to break down the barriers and fears around AI to enable as many people to benefit from this
technology as possible.
Since the dawn of ChatGPT Mike has been exploring and learning in depth all about Large Language Models (AI) and how they are presented to us. He's now also helping businesses with their automation needs and incorporating AI into this process.
Over the last year and a half Ihe has delivered training and webinars to over a thousand people about the practical applications of AI so you can get the most out of using tools such as ChatGPT and other Large Language Models.
Naeem Anwar
Fresh-faced out of university, Naeem started work for a top ten accountancy firm back in 2001. A few years later, he qualified as a Chartered Accountant and decided to make the move into industry where he quickly moved up the corporate ladder in various accounting roles across a number of industries.
It has now been over 20 years in the profession and Naeem is still going strong. Having run his own successful accountancy practice, he now offers finance training to non-finance managers. Over the years, Naeem has developed a knack for being able to explain difficult financial concepts in plain English.
When it comes to finance, he understands that not everyone shares the same passion and enthusiasm for looking at the numbers (and spreadsheets)! With this in mind, he puts every effort into making his courses fun and engaging. Attendees leave the training with an increased confidence in their ability to review the figures, a better understanding of the specific subject matter and a sense of enjoyment that came from attending the workshop.
Sarah Helm
Sarah has extensive experience in Learning & Development and worked previously as a Human Resources Manager. In 2004 Sarah set up her own training company to provide training consultancy across a wide range or organisations, including telecoms, pharmaceutical, insurance and manufacturing.
Sarah is passionate about designing and delivering high impact, enjoyable, practical and relevant training courses and 1:1 coaching. She always uses a personal approach to ensure that each and every individual leaves a training session with the feeling that they have invested their precious time well. Sarah embraces projects with enthusiasm and thrives on developing creative ways to enable people to learn, particularly in leadership, personal effectiveness and resilience skills.
Sarah has been involved with Graduate, Apprentice and emerging talent programmes across a number of organisations. With involvement from the initial planning stage, through to delivery of face to face and online sessions, along with coaching and ongoing support.
Sarah Hobbs
Sarah is the co-founder of Vondel Professional Development, and is an engaging and highly qualified business and training consultant who specialises in making finance easily comprehensible for non-financial professionals. She has worked with a variety of clients across both the private and public sector including HMRC, Ince & Co, Wolseley, United Biscuits, PwC, Knight Frank, Mothercare, Nabarro, Norton Rose, BMJ Publishing and Barclays Bank.
Shona Ward
Shona loves to help people make changes in their people skills that produce big results. She is a Managing Partner of the Learning Curve Network and has been designing and delivering interactive training events since 1987. She began her career providing individual counselling and psychotherapy in Further Education, Health and Social services and uses this background in psychology to make her training effective and long lasting. She provides management development, staff event facilitation and interpersonal skills training across multiple sectors and has worked with manufacturing companies, language schools, insurance companies, publishers, utility companies, housing associations, NHS Trusts, and universities . Our clients say that she is engaging, informative, and inspires confidence.
Sue Evans
Sue’s a people and process performance specialist, speaker and coach – on a mission to get people fixing the problems which no one else has been brave enough to tackle.
Originally from an Engineering background, Sue’s highlights include leading programmes which more than doubled two site’s productivity, and delivering £1.9M waste reduction in under 5 months, with a zero spend. She’s used to delivering big results from little budgets.
Sometimes a compelling business case isn’t enough. Changing mindsets and behaviours isn’t easy - that’s why so performance programmes give patchy results. Sue embeds real-world problem-solving, combining the best of Lean and Six Sigma process improvement with the latest in behavioural science.
With Black Belts in Six Sigma and Lean Sigma, Sue’s also an ILM Level 7 certified coach, an NLP Master Practitioner and an Approved Havening® Practitioner (trained in each by the original creators) and a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association.