meet everyone

Lydia Paris – Head of Client Programmes 

Lydia is an expert in helping organisations deliver positive change for both themselves and society.  

She has a wealth of experience working with multinational corporations, government, trusts and charities – delivering strategy, organisational development and collaborations expertise to help improve the way their services impact society. She has applied these skills across sectors, from health and social care to sustainability and social impact. 

She specialises in the design and delivery of highly effective and productive collaborations, recognising the power of bringing people together to solve problems, create high performing teams and maximise organisational impact. Having worked in several start-up environments, Lydia is experienced in how to build a thriving consultancy business, creating robust processes, business opportunities and products from the ground up. She values people and relationships, understanding that they lie at the heart of any successful organisation. 

Lydia is also a yoga instructor and a mentor for young people. She loves moving, whether it’s yoga, running, walking, or working out. She has a passion for science, art and psychology – enjoying books, exhibitions or conversations on these topics.

Nicola Cardwell – Consultant

Nicola is an organisational development consultant specialising in Leadership, Culture Change, and Inclusion, with 20+ years of consulting experience.  She is skilled at helping clients to clarify their strategic objectives and co-designing impactful development interventions, systems, and processes to bring them to life. She does this with robust empathy, seeking to build commitment and capability for all involved in the change process.  

Nicola has significant experience working within large complex organisations including professional services, FS, Technology, FMCG, Engineering and Public Health sectors.  Nicola has a reputation for challenging and supporting senior and future leaders, being commercially astute and focused on making a tangible difference.  Nicola has lived and worked in the Middle East and has held several global roles throughout her career.

From 2014 to 2018 Nicola led PwC UK’s Inclusive Leadership cultural and behavioural change agenda.  This involved building the Inclusive Leadership Strategy and Capability of senior business leaders and their teams.  Nicola also led the design and execution of critical interventions to support PwC UK’s published gender and ethnicity talent targets. 

Nicola holds a Masters in Leading and Facilitating Transformative Change, is an AoEC Accredited Professional Executive Coach and Systemic Team coach and is a Member of the CIPD.

Nicola is a trustee for New Leaf Support, a charity supporting victims of domestic abuse. Outside of work she can be found transporting children to various sporting and social events, walking the dog, and playing cricket.

Giles O’Halloran – Consultant

Giles is a specialist HR consultant, coach, speaker and columnist.  

He started his HR career with IBM and worked in the fields of recruitment, employee relations and business partnering. Giles designs and facilitates people strategy and HR transformation programmes, advises organisations on effective resourcing techniques, HR operating models and HR technology, and has delivered proven supportive outplacement services during sensitive restructures.

He has unique experience working in highly sensitive environments such as security, defence, government, and policing, as well as technology, recruitment, financial services, professional services and retail sectors. He’s worked across Europe, Africa and the Middle East, often with multinational and multicultural teams and over the last year has been working with the BTP, CNC and other police forces. 

He’s a renowned columnist with a leading Defence & Security career transition publication and has written over 150 articles, blogs, and posts on employment, HR and the changing nature of work. He has since worked in other senior HR roles across Europe, advised at Board level, and implemented both strategic and operational HR business solutions. 

Cris Beswick – Consultant

Originally trained as a product & industrial designer, Cris spent over a decade as a successful entrepreneur & CEO building an award-winning design group. After structuring a full exit 2008 he is now recognised globally as a thought leader on innovation leadership and creating innovative organisations.

Because of his own business background Cris knows exactly what it’s like to wear the CEO’s shoes putting him in an excellent position to work with and advise senior leaders of global organisations on strategic approaches to differentiation and innovation. As such Cris has coached, advised and delivered keynotes to some of the worlds most successful companies on how to become exceptional by building future oriented innovation strategies, leadership approaches and organisational cultures.

Cris has also delivered executive education programmes on innovation for leading UK and international business schools such as Henley Business School, Cranfield University’s Centre for Competitive Creative Design and Synergy Business School in Dubai to name but a few. 

Cris enjoys good food & fine wine and is passionate about worldwide travel with his wife Nikki and their two girls Roma and Mila.

Lottie Skuthe-Cook – Consultant

Lottie is a Personal Certified Coach whose passion lies in seeing her clients unlock their potential and grow. With over 20 years of experience as a coach, facilitator and trainer she provides an environment full of energy, warmth, and challenge in equal measure, which in turn enables her client’s performance to excel.

She lives by her three core values – trust, honesty, and respect – and as a result, she works best with clients who share them. Lottie will invest whatever it takes to get to know her clients and their business to find the right balance for the working relationship, ensuring the greatest return on investment.

She is known by her clients for her ability to be both challenging and encouraging in appropriate measure and ensure a focus on the agreed outcomes in a safe and trusted environment.

Drawing on almost 20 years’ experience with large multi-national organisations, Lottie has held director roles responsible for quality and standards, business development, sales and operations prior to becoming a coach and consultant in 2001.

A Swedish national, Lottie is fluent in both English and German.

Anthony Manning – Consultant

Anthony is an experienced team leadership coach and facilitator with an MA in Management Studies and an MSc in Training and Development. Anthony has gathered extensive experience as a senior HR Business Partner, Head of Learning and Development, Executive Coach and OD Consultant in two of the Big Four accounting firms.

He supports leaders and their teams with culture-winning communication, managing and leading through change and working with conflict and difficult conversations.

As an enthusiastic and lifelong learner, he is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and completed his postgraduate coaching qualification at Henley Business School, and recently completed a Counselling and Psychotherapy diploma.

Anthony is a session musician, qualified sports coach and has reached the grade of Tae Kwon Do Grandmaster.

PJ Stevens – Consultant

PJ is an all-round culture change consultant who has spent 18 years on a mission to help build better businesses.

Working with business leaders using industry-leading change management methodologies to deliver outstanding business outcomes, he is our expert in purposeful change. He does this by harvesting the talent and knowledge that exists in people and teams , but too often lays dormant in businesses – in order to elevate thinking and behaviours to deliver change and value creation in our eco-systems.

PJ is a purpose-led Transformational Change Management Consultant, and a highly experienced Facilitator, Coach and Confidant to Executives, Leaders and Entrepreneurs.

PJ has proudly worked for clients such as Rolls Royce, MBDA, Westons Cider, Bunzl, Eskom, Givenchy, BMW, QAPCO (Qatar), Lloyds Banking Group, DMG World Media, Centrica, EDF Energy, Nabarro, Clifford Chance, RBS, Shell, HSBC, the Royal Voluntary Service, CTBF charity, Zeneus, GSK and Shire Pharmaceuticals, and some private and sporting clients including Premier footballers, Olympic medallists and European Golfers.

PJ releases more value from every organisation’s greatest asset – their people – and translates that into purposeful change and value in the business, at the individual, team and organisational level.

Colin Middlemiss – Consultant

With 20 years of experience, Colin helps to deliver successful, transformational change within clients’ businesses through effective Communications and Engagement Strategies and expertly executed plans. He has worked with small businesses right up to large-scale ones such as Morrisons, BAE Systems and NPower, supporting their business objectives by running day to day teams, supporting change, and building engagement throughout an organisation.

Colin’s experience includes leading and managing successful communications and engagement teams, developing compelling corporate narratives that engages and inspires colleagues, designing digital-first communications and engagement strategies, emergency and crisis communications and the delivery of expertly managed and engaging events.

Ravi Khanna – Consultant

Ravi is an experienced organisational development consultant, specialising in culture change, employee engagement, leadership development, diversity and inclusion and wellbeing. An accredited coach, facilitator and mentor, Ravi started his career in customer experience management before transitioning into people advisory consulting in 2009.

Focussed on creating cultures that help align people with strategy and cultivating the behaviours that enable the achievement of organisational goals, Ravi has designed and delivered behavioural change interventions for businesses operating across EMEA, APAC and the Americas.With a background in psychology, psychotherapy and meditation, Ravi is fascinated by the human mind and challenges individuals and teams to unlock their potential by transforming outdated beliefs and adopting new mindsets that underpin positive change.

Helen Reeve Morris – Consultant

Helen is our consultant with a unique blend of financial and HR experience. She began her career at PwC, where she qualified as a Chartered Accountant before moving over to work in the culture and behaviour space.

Helen’s background makes her a highly versatile consultant – people-focused and strategic, as well as a commercial leader. Helen’s broad range of experience has been gained from working both domestically and internationally and having the opportunity to engage with an extensive range of stakeholders at both Board and Executive level.

Hugo Clarke – Consultant

Hugo brings a unique breadth of experience as a leader and mentor with over 30 years working across military, government, commercial and non-profit sectors. Within the military, he served in diverse leadership roles in the First Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland. He also worked with the HALO Trust, a mine clearance charity, leading teams in Angola and Afghanistan in the pre-Taliban era. 

Since leaving the army in 2013 he developed and ran community cohesion projects in diverse cultural and social groupings across the UK and led the UK office for the Risk Advisory Group’s government services and risk practise. He has considerable experience delivering leadership and risk culture programmes for governments, large commercial organisations across a multitude of sectors, and start-ups within the UK and globally.  

Hugo is passionate about risk culture and cultural identity. He works with the British Institute for Studies in Iraq on a project he originated to open a museum in Basrah, Southern Iraq. He has lectured widely on the relationship between social cohesion and cultural identity. 

Andrew Deller – Consultant

Andrew  is  a  highly  qualified,  experienced  ‘development’ consultant who works with individuals, Leaders and teams to enable them to operate at their best.

Andrew  is  CIPD  qualified  with  a  background  in  Financial Services and significant experience of developing leadership capability in Africa and the Middle East.  As a leader in business for 16 years, Andrew has a range of experience spanning HR business partnering and operations, leadership development and organisational change and has worked with organisations large and small.  He demonstrates flexibility and adaptability in building relationships with individuals at all levels, in order to drive personal development and changes in behaviour.  Andrew is design, execution and results focussed and operates to the highest standards of integrity.

Andrew’s leadership development experience includes work with Leaders and Intact teams across the financial and professional services industries, pharmaceutical, technology, manufacturing and media. Clients include: Tetrapak; National Commercial Bank, KSA; EY; Barclays; Vodafone; AstraZeneca; Sharp Electronics; BMW; Bank Muscat International; CISCO; Acino Pharma; Accenture; BBC; Lloyds Banking Group; Smith & Nephew; Standard Chartered.  Andrew lived in Riyadh for 18 months whilst working for Tadawul, Saudi Stock Exchange which has led to a range of leadership development projects with clients in the Middle East.

Andrew works with Leaders at all levels within organisations to develop their awareness, mindset and capabilities so they may know how to lead their teams with vision, energy, imagination and attention.

Gillian Mason – Consultant 

Gillian is all about culture, leadership and behaviours that drive best self and authentic performance. She brings 25+ years of experience in people-centred roles and left the corporate world as a Head of Organisational Development in a regional Utility. She is a highly experienced facilitator bringing realism, enthusiasm and energy; an impactful presenter with great presence, and honesty and has great use of storytelling.

She is known for being a credible and trusted coach and strategic thinker as well as a powerful planner and commercially minded troubleshooter. She will bring confidence to and structure around your strategy and change whilst having the flexibility and positivity to make any subject matter interesting and enjoyable. She is an accredited coach with a range of personality and preference diagnostic tools for individuals, teams or organisations

Having developed and implemented people strategy in organisations – the reality and challenge of culture shift are not lost on Gillian who will bring a realistic and refreshing approach.

Gillian has worked with and across a number of sectors including Education, Utilities, Media, Sales, Customer Service, Health care, Emergency services and Insurance and helps organisations thrive and leaders grow, make career and life decisions and transition to their next big thing.

Out of work, there is nothing Gillian likes better than being outdoors, in the woods or on the beach with her family and Wilf and Fred (her 2 dogs) or being in the kitchen cooking up a feast.

Jo Houchin – Consultant 

Jo is a Learning and Development professional with over 20 years’ experience in developing people, teams and organisations.  Working across public, private, utility and HE sectors with a wide range of people including, academics, surveyors, engineers, managers, and leaders of all levels. 

Having extensive experience across a variety of sectors, Jo has built a depth of understanding of different cultures and the organisational challenges faced by them.  Her passion is helping people become more aware of how they can help themselves and providing them with the tools and motivation to achieve real performance improvements.  

Jo is a Level 7 qualified coach with a Post Graduate Diploma in Coaching Psychology.  This gives her a diverse and pragmatic coaching tool kit to suit a broad range of coaching needs and preferences.  Her approach is both reflective and challenging, drawing on her psychological training to identify unhelpful patterns of behaviour, and unravel barriers to personal and organisational change.  Those who work with Jo can expect to learn much about themselves and the impact they have at work in an exploratory, non-judgmental environment.

Beyond coaching, Jo is an experienced facilitator and leadership development specialist.  In organisations she takes a systemic approach, developing individuals, teams and the organisational context to bring about change.

Rachel Perkins – Consultant 

Rachel is a certified business psychologist and trained coach, with over 20 years of experience in the Financial Services sector. She has worked in recruitment, learning, talent management, culture change and leadership development, with the common thread of enabling individuals, teams and organisations become more effective. Whilst working at NatWest bank, Rachel led a successful programme of work to deliver large scale, culture change via leaders and managers across the global business. It was this programme that clarified her passion for this work.

Rachel has a keen interest in what makes people tick and how to create organisations where people can thrive. With a strong eye for rigour and detail and a natural curiosity about people and their perspective, Rachel designs and facilitates impactful interventions which give people the opportunity to move forward with greater confidence and commitment. Rachel loves working with individuals and groups to explore the changes they want to make, what might be standing in their way and the solutions they are willing to try, to make the desired change.

Recognising that building great cultures can be hard, with no easy ‘fixes’, Rachel combines an informed, supportive approach with gentle challenge and curiosity to design impactful interventions which help organisations move forward with greater confidence and commitment. Rachel is known for having an eye for the detail of an intervention, and a desire to combine academic evidence with the practical reality organisations face, to bring rigour to any programme she works on. Rachel is a trained coach and business psychologist, with an MSc in Organisational Psychology. 

Mel Rees – Consultant

A customer experience and employee engagement specialist, Mel has vast experience in devising data driven, strategic programmes to help organisations prioritise their customer experience.  Mel is passionate about equipping, engaging and empowering employees to do the right thing for their customers. ​

Mel has experience in leading the delivery of successful, insight led, customer experience and employee engagement programmes across a number of sectors including financial services and utilities and more recently as Customer Experience Director for First Group.​

At First Group, Mel led the design and delivery of a transformational customer experience strategy including immersive employee training and the launch of a real time, customer and employee satisfaction measurement programme, all underpinned by a comprehensive internal communications plan. The programme delivered great results because it was rooted in real life experience of both customers and employees which meant the plan was pragmatic and credible and as such, had great buy in at all levels of the organization.​

Open and insightful, Mel builds trust and engagement quickly which allows her to deliver results at pace.  ​

Carolyn Quainton – Consultant

An experienced customer experience consultant, Carolyn is passionate about driving customer and employee engagement. ​

Carolyn’s background is in the design of bespoke training content. She has created innovative, behaviour-changing training programmes for numerous leading organisations, including Post Office, First Group, Zurich, Costa, Barratt Homes and DIRECTV. All of these programmes have had one thing in common: to engage employees to deliver a better experience to the customer. ​

As a consultant, Carolyn has supported organisations with multiple aspects of CX, including: voice of the customer/employee programmes; customer and employee journey mapping; CX governance and strategy; driving a culture of customer centricity; customer value propositions; “Brand in Action” behavioural blueprints; “low effort” customer experiences and many more. ​

Personable, empathetic and outgoing, Carolyn is quick to build strong relationships with the clients she works with. She has a knack of quickly getting to grips with an organisation – its people, its customers and its challenges. And she has a talent for absorbing a vast amount of complex content and simplifying it for the target audience. Carolyn has worked extensively with front-line customer-facing employees, striving to understand the barriers that prevent the delivery of great customer service. ​

Carolyn’s other passion is film production. She’s an advocate of sharing real human stories (from customers and employees) on film to drive engagement. An experienced film producer, Carolyn creates engaging and emotive films to complement training programmes and support internal comms strategies. ​

Kerry Freeman – Culture Change Consultant

Kerry has 21 years financial services experience and is the former Head of Culture for NatWest Group where she took the Bank from 4th Quartile to 1st Quartile performance in the annual Banking Standards Board independent assessment of culture.

Kerry left NatWest Group to pursue her passion for culture, engagement and EVP, working with organisations in Forestry, Fintech, Legal, Energy and Education sector. She’s a specialist at reforming cultural practices, increasing employee engagement and creating award-winning EVPs that have demonstrable impact. Kerry has an enthusiasm for behavioural science and building psychological safety in workplaces and is passionate about making behaviour change practical and embedded.  

She is an experienced and accredited facilitator and coach (face to face and online) with over 15 years experience of designing and running workshops, development courses and events for groups sizes from 5 to 300, from junior to c-suite level.

Sallyann Weston-Scales – Consultant

Sallyann has over 18 years experience of leadership coaching and culture change, supporting global brands to create more inclusive cultures, and develop and retain their key talent. She has worked in a wide range of sectors from advertising and media, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, professional and financial services.

Sallyann is an expert in culture change, making it stick, and helping organisations to translate their values into behaviours which are clearly understood and embraced by their people.

She designs and delivers leadership development, inclusive leadership and women’s leadership programmes, incorporating 1-2-1 coaching to provide participants with the opportunity to focus on their perceived barriers. Sallyann is passionate about enabling leaders to discover and follow their true purpose and provide them with the tools to support their people to succeed. As a coach, she blends traditional coaching skills with her experience as a Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Master Practitioner and knowledge of Emotional Intelligence.

She was a Managing Director and Executive Coach at a leading D&I consultancy for nearly eight years, prior to that she was a Management Consultant with EY experienced in culture change and change management.

She has an MBA from Henley Business School and started her career as a commercial solicitor.  Outside of work she enjoys running, yoga and managing a small property business.

Ed Beard – Consultant 

Ed has 15 years experience as an integrated marketing strategist, with an MSc in Organisational psychology.  Ed helps businesses adapt and thrive to bring about positive change. He’s great at creating shared purpose to engage and motivate workforces and teams, galvanising organisations and leaders to take a more human-centric approach to fundamentally change the way they operate. 

He’s worked in some of the most renowned Digital and Advertising agencies, working for the likes of Expedia, COS, SAB Miller, The AA, Dominos, E.On, Asda, Barclays Wealth, HSBC, AstraZeneca, and Lloyds TSB.

Ed’s led and grown strategy teams, developed individuals to achieve their full potential, and set the cultures within agencies so teams across disciplines could thrive.

He then went on to work for Grace & Co, Digitas, LBj, Kitcatt Nohr, and the BBC. In 2020 he founded Liminal Store bringing together his marketing and organisational psychology expertise.

Victoria Garratt – Consultant 

Victoria’s career to date has been focused predominantly on people development and communication where she has been fortunate enough to gain many years of experience working across the public, private and charitable sectors as a leader, coach, project manager and in learning & development.

In addition to her employed experience, she has worked for many years as a consultant, designing and delivering bespoke solutions in support of organisations that require upskilling of staff, leadership development, behavioural change and other professional development solutions. 

Furthermore, Victoria is a qualified coach with a Diploma in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and is accredited in the performance psychology tool PRINT®. She uses these skills to coach individuals and teams across a wide range of clients and at all levels in the promotion of self-awareness, and to stretch, inspire, and create real and lasting change.

Rebecca Tyrell – Consultant

Rebecca brings a wealth of experience and a proven track record operating across global, fast-paced and matrix businesses for some of the World’s leading brands within the Banking and FMCG sectors.  

Empathic and tenacious with the ability to motivate and connect geographically and culturally diverse teams, she has worked extensively with Senior Executives to reshape Organisations, drive strategic priorities, and deliver Leadership/Executive and Talent Development, Organisation-wide Learning, and Culture and Organisation Transformation. 

Having qualified through Henley Business School, she brings curiosity, clarity and pragmatism to her coaching practice.

Rebecca’s passion for self-development has recently led to her completing a Post Graduate Diploma in Law.   At any point in time, you are likely to find her enrolled in a course or undertaking further education!