Our People.
"Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean." – Ryunosuke Satoro
We provide advice, guidance and expertise on culture, people, change and skills development, however, while working with us you will gain more than this. We get into the bones and under the soil of your organisation, your concerns and your challenges. We work in partnership with you to create the future impact you plan to achieve.
Gary King:
Director & Co-Founder
Gary is a psychologist, facilitator, adventurer and coach. He blends his in-depth knowledge and experience of the outdoors, system change and behavioural science to provide engaging, meaningful and experiential sessions with individuals and groups. He is passionate about enabling positive impacts that benefit people, businesses and the planet. When he is not with his clients, he can be found having adventures in the wild, spending time with his family or carving spoons. His clients love his high levels of energy, optimism and enthusiasm. Gary ensures that every project he delivers aligns with his core values of honesty and equality.
Jill Chapman:
Director & Co-Founder
Jill is a Chartered Coaching Psychologist and Chartered Occupational Psychologist with more than twenty years of experience working to help people, teams and organisations develop and thrive. She is a Coach, Facilitator and Mindfulness in Business Trainer, bringing Neuro-Biology, ACT (Acceptance & Commitment Training), embodied practice, systems thinking and group dynamics into her work. Jill’s clients love the spaciousness, compassion and passion of her facilitation. Jill is highly proactive in her own practice and development, and her values of generosity and compassion are evident in both her training and client work.
Beth Clare McManus:
Coach & Co-Founder
Beth uses a visual and engaging approach, bringing creativity and calmness to her coaching spaces. Her focus is supporting people to be human at work, using the core themes of well-being, emotion, and creativity to explore this with clients. Her non-directive style is most effective when individuals and teams are ready to co-create the space as equals, and are open to exploring deep reflection both inside and outside of the coaching session to facilitate change. Her top two values are curiosity and kindness.
Qualifications
Beth is an EMCC Accredited Coach at Senior Practitioner level and holds an MSc (Distinction) in Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology.
Mark Goddard:
Business Development Manager & Breath Coach
Mark is a serial entrepreneur, with over 25 years of leading in the healthcare industry. His success is based upon building trusting long-term partnerships with his clients. Most recently, co-founding BreathQ, a collaboration of international breath coaches that focus on maximising employee health, wellbeing & performance. Mark’s experience in & knowledge of start-ups, SME’s & corporate organisations give him a rare understanding of the challenges faced by employees of organisations at any level. Added to this, holding trust and honesty as key values and a service-driven focus, ensures that delighting the customer is the most common outcome of the collaborations with him.
Qualifications
BA (Hons), MBA, Accredited Yogabody Breathwork Instructor, Accredited Oxygen Advantage Breathwork Instructor
Richard Mechen:
Associate Coach
Richard is a Chartered Coaching Psychologist with 25 years' experience of helping individuals and organisations improve performance. His expertise in coaching, assessment and development comes from leadership roles in-house, and through consultancy across the public & private sectors. His style is person-centred and business-oriented, drawing on resources from work, sport, and self-development. He offers practical tools to enhance capability, self-awareness, motivation and resilience. In leadership coaching, he draws upon cognitive behavioural, acceptance commitment, and person-centred approaches along with NLP, GROW and other models. He helps clients embed change by appreciating the organisation’s politics, influencing strategies, and image management issues that impact on their leadership and performance. Above all he seeks to help clients take perspective on what matters most to them, and to balance work performance with wellbeing. Outside of work, Richard is a sportsman, musician and Tai Chi practitioner, and is based in London.
Dr Sybille Schiffmann:
Associate Coach
Sybille supports leaders and their teams to flourish, in line with their organisational purpose and values. Her career reflects a deep commitment to service within the public sector/social sector arena and she is continually sustained by the profound impact such work has on people’s lives. Throughout her coaching, facilitation and consultancy work, she has sought to champion a step change in attitudes and action to produce innovative action that creates sustainable, social, and environmental impact. For her PhD studies, she has explored the lived experience of shared leadership within the social sector. She lives in Plymouth by the sea, with two cats and one husband.
Helen Siroda:
Master Executive Coach
Helen is an APECS accredited Master Executive coach. She is also founder and director of Wise Goose, a certified BCorp delivering professional training in coaching. She loves working with people who are eager to stay true to their values and be part of building ‘future fit’ effective, humane organisations with ‘spirit’; places where wisdom and well-being can flourish. She supports leaders facing complex decisions, dilemmas, and values conflicts, helping them to close the gap between ideals and reality. Helen brings significant psychological expertise to her work. For more than 20 years she was a U.K. Council for Psychotherapy registered integrative psychotherapist, she co-founded a psychotherapy training in Sweden where she worked for 25 years.
Qualifications
BA (1 st class) Comparative Religion Manchester University
MA (distinction) Responsibility in Business Practice University of Bath
Paul King: Integral Embodiment & Somatic Coach
Paul is a leadership and performance coach and consultant. He is known for his work with the body-mind and integral approaches, connecting personal development and wellbeing to larger system change. He is a Master Practitioner and certified trainer in NLP. Paul was the first person in Europe to be certified to teach Wendy Palmer’s Leadership Embodiment work. He describes his work as supporting people to connect more to their power and potential in an embodied way and to enhance their presence and relationship with others.
Catherine Knight:
Associate Coach
Catherine has been a Chartered Occupational Psychologist for 30 years, she enables individuals and teams to grow, lead and deliver. She has worked with a diverse range of global corporate clients, NGOs, public sector organisations; addressing business, cultural and people complexities that impact on leading, implementing and sustaining change.
Experienced and skilled at working, influencing and challenging at a senior level in rapidly evolving environments. Her pragmatic, adaptable style enables her to flex to client and situation requirements moving between coaching, consulting and facilitating with confidence and credibility. Her coaching clients relish the opportunities she provides to explore, experiment, reflect, challenge, plan and learn.
Dr Stuart Clark: Author, Journalist, Astrophysicist & Systems Expert
Dr Stuart Clark is an award-winning author and journalist, who specialises in bringing the complex world of astronomy and space to the general public. Formerly the European Space Agency’s senior editor for space science, he now owns Expanded Universe Ltd., a communications consultancy and content creation company specially geared towards the space sectors.
He is a consultant for New Scientist, the European Space Agency, International Moon Day and a columnist for The Guardian. He wrote and presented The Music of the Spheres for BBC Radio 3 and From Enlightenment to Entanglement for BBC Radio 4.
In 2013, he was named European Astronomy Journalist of the Year. Most recently he was editorial director of Our Fragile Space, a space sustainability exhibition by photographer Max Alexander that premiered at Lloyds of London in October.
His latest book, Beneath the Night: How the stars have shaped the history of humankind (Faber), was Editor’s choice in The Bookseller for September 2020. A previous book, The Sun Kings, about 19th century solar astronomers, won the American Publishers’ Association prize for best work of astronomy/cosmology; was shortlisted by the The Royal Society in London for best popular science book of 2008; and won Italy’s Monselice Prize for best scientific translation. Stuart’s books have now been translated into more than 20 languages.
Stuart is an alumnus and visiting fellow of the University of Hertfordshire, a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a former vice-chair of the Association of British Science Writers. He holds a first class BSc in astronomy with physics and a PhD in astrophysics. In September 2020, he was awarded an (Hon) DSc from the University of Hertfordshire for “services to astronomy and the public understanding of science”.
Stuart values authenticity, knowledge, respect, and stability.
Reach out to us by email or phone to arrange a conversation. Our founding partners Jill and Gary will happily give their time to listen, answer your questions and chew the fat with you. We will then be able to carry on the conversation on how our team can add real value for you and your organisation.