Let me tell you a little about me.
I consider myself to be a true hybrid! I've worked in business at the sharp end of managing staff and customer relationships; I established and grew my own retail consultancy. I broke away, followed a long-seated dream and found real creative success! I'm now using all those skills and experiences collected from my 30 something year career, together with ones that I've acquired more recently. I understand organisational cultures and demands and I also understand people; their dreams and their goals.

How I got to here:

I started my career in retail management, managing forty staff in a large high street retail store. These were the days before computerisation and I spent my time shuffling endless paperwork, I was completely process-driven and had nothing to do with people - my customers and staff. I was successful, the businesses youngest manager ever at just 21 and yet I realised that I was very unhappy - so I quit.

I decided to develop up my own sales and marketing consultancy specialising in supporting small and medium sized independent retailers. Nine years later and I was riding the high waves of success again, a business with a £500k turnover. However this time I was working with people and loving the diverse relationships and challenges my own business brought.

I had a three-year failed marriage and was living the single life on the south coast, surely this was nirvana? I should have been grateful, all those riches and yet I knew I still wasn't truly happy. I suppose I had a premature mid-life crisis at the tender age of 30! I finally decided to follow my career of choice since I was in my early teens - to become a professional actor. I'm sure you can imagine the responses from clients, colleague's, friends and family!

I auditioned for six drama schools, was offered five definite places and was shortlisted at the sixth. I sold my Bournemouth home, dissolved my consultancy and moved to North London where I studied for three years at a drama school called Mountview. I graduated in 1993 and was lucky to find work quickly. Through my six-year acting career I appeared as the leading role of Jean Valjean in the highly successful West End musical Les Miserables. Numerous other theatre roles and TV appearances and film work meant I had a very rewarding acting career.

A jobbing actor doesn't earn a great deal, so around this time I was looking for good ways to earn extra money to pay the mortgage. I realised that my combination of acting experience and "real world" business experience made me a skilled business roleplayer. I supplemented my acting work by working in experiential learning. I discovered a hitherto hidden passion: people development. My life was about to change again! Whilst working for Barclays in Africa I met the directors of a UK-based training consultancy, the result was the birth of Corporate Drama, a team of specialist business roleplayers and real players whom I still manage and develop to this day.

Since then, with the help and encouragement of my training company clients, I have developed into a successful facilitator, trainer and coach. It seems that all my career and life experience has distilled into what I now do. I'm so lucky because I get paid for what I truly love doing - helping people develop. People fascinate me. I now balance my time between managing my roleplayer team, delivering training programmes and coaching.

I have been awarded the Certificate of Training Practice (Merit) and I’m a member of the Chartered Institute of Personal Development (CIPD). I'm also qualified as an accredited practitioner of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, SDI (Strength Deployment Inventory) and SPIN Selling methodology. I'm also a Coaches Training Institute trained coach and a member of the ICF (International Coaching Federation).

When I'm not doing any of the above I'm spending quality time in my garden and pond in the Chilterns, being with my family and friends, enjoying plays and movies or diving with sharks in various places around the world.

So, as you can see - I really am a hybrid!

I look forward to getting to know more about you.

Please read the Frequently Asked Questions page to find out more, and then if you feel you'd like to arrange a free taster session of thirty minutes coaching, please get in touch.