I completed my studies in Social Science at Christ Church in 2000 and still utilise the knowledge and skills I gained to this day as a professional business coach and learning and development consultant. Now I design and run behavioural development interventions, such as leadership programmes, culture change programmes, etc. Here I utilise my learning on society, culture and connections between conflicting social ideals and the role of the individual and develop these into useful business strategies and functional collaborations. Critically, I now focus on one of my own key learnings from University - the freedom of thought that an open mind brings to finding creative solutions to business issues. Without this background I would not be able to develop the programmes that I design today. My reading on Marx and his theory of human nature inspired me to go on and develop further in the field and the works of Victor Frankl and Steven Covey get frequent references in my work. At present I am supporting the development of womens' causes in my organisation and the influences of my feminism reading at Christ Church are helping me to work with them to identify creative ways to further the opportunities for women in the company.
My career after university began working for Carphone Warehouse where I ran sales training and management development programmes. After 10 years at Carphone I left to join Dixons Retail where I deigned and rolled out a leadership succession programme for aspiring store managers. I have now worked at Konica Minolta for 5 years where I specialise in behavioural development - specifically leadership development. This includes 121 executive coaching as well as running behavioural development workshops to larger groups. I have designed and rolled out a new sales process and accompanying sales development programme and am currently working on a culture change programme to engage colleagues more with the values and philosophies of the business. My next step will be to set up my own learning and development consultancy.