Vonnie Alexander

With 15 years of experience holding Board positions and a decade in coaching, Vonnie’s sessions are dynamic, energising, and, above all, results-driven. Based upon her philosophy that coaching without action is just conversation, she uses her rich business background, entrepreneurial spirit, and unerring interest in people to challenge and champion in equal measure.

Driven by her commitment to bringing about lasting change, she offers inspiring coaching sessions to individuals, teams and Boards across a wide range of sectors, including tech, retail, publishing, marketing and advertising, transport and infrastructure, travel, private equity, pharma, legal, and professional services.

Lynne Chambers

With over 30 years of business leadership experience in some of the world’s top organisations, Lynne Chambers is a coach who blends deep industry expertise with a passion for fostering transformational change. Her coaching unlocks fresh perspectives, enabling clients to achieve meaningful and lasting results, both personally and professionally.

Using this experience, she balances an empathetic and practical approach to coaching that is both supportive and challenging. By bringing a solution-based perspective to her client work, she excels at helping individuals and teams reach their full potential and achieve tangible results.

Lynne specialises in executive coaching, facilitation, team coaching and leadership development within a broad range of different industries. Her extensive background in mediation and conflict resolution supports organisations looking to foster more harmonious and productive working environments.

Ed Dulson

Bringing expertise within global technology firms as well as experience in founding and selling a tech business, Ed particularly enjoys working with leaders in international roles who are taking on bigger and broader challenges. By building deep and trusting relationships with his clients, he creates a safe space that allows leaders to open up and wrestle with their challenges so that they can find solutions and practical ways forward.

Having lived and worked in Asia for five years, Ed is renowned for his in-depth understanding of leaders working across cultures. He has 25 years of experience coaching clients across a broad range of sectors, including finance, technology, insurance, utilities, chemicals, travel, private equity, venture capital, pharma, legal, art, and professional services.

Hilary Douglas

During her executive career, Hilary held Board roles in five key Departments of the UK Government before switching to non-executive roles, including serving as Vice Chair on the Board of the British Red Cross. Hilary harnesses this personal experience and applies it to the leadership challenges facing coachees. By forming lasting and trusted partnerships with clients, she empowers them to test their opinions and work through any limiting beliefs that may be holding them back.

 Hilary works with a wide range of tools and approaches tailored to coachees’ needs and has supported clients in financial services, law firms, transport, central and local government, regulators, healthcare, education and humanitarian charities. Hilary is also co-author of The Reluctant Leader and a number of Praesta publications.

Alistair Forbes

Alistair’s successful reputation for coaching senior leaders and their teams is rooted in 35 years of experience in the retail and technology sectors. As a former CEO himself, his understanding of the unique and ever-changing challenges of senior leadership has led him to believe that “every great leader needs a great coach”.

Bringing warmth and humour to his sessions, Alistair helps his clients tease out the answers they instinctively know while ensuring that their focus remains firmly on their own leadership, their people’s development, and the wider business agenda.

Working successfully with individuals and teams, his results-based approach is supported by a master’s degree in executive Coaching from Ashridge Business School and 10 years of coaching experience across a wide range of sectors.

Pete Freeman

With a background as a Chartered Banker and Derivatives Trader who has also owned and grown a successful recruitment group, Pete understands that being a senior leader has never been more demanding. Calm, logical, and good-humoured, he creates space for clients to slow down and gain new insight from fresh angles.

As an advocate of Critical Thinking, Pete has a keen ear for hidden and limiting assumptions and is committed to helping clients develop their influence, balance strategy and management, or navigate complex organisational, cultural, or personal change.

As a highly skilled coach who also conducts Praesta’s Board Performance Reviews, Pete has more than 15 years of experience working with leaders and teams across a remarkably broad range of clients, from aerospace to professional services, higher education to rapid-growth tech companies.

Joy Harcup

With a background in law and commercial dispute resolution, Joy also brings Board-level experience in overseeing strategic reviews and change programmes. In the words of her clients, her coaching is “insightful”, “balanced”, and “politically aware”; an open space to talk honestly about issues, focus on the bigger picture and develop the self-awareness, resilience and mindset they need to enhance their own distinctive leadership style.

 Over the last 20 years, Joy has coached senior leaders in everything from blue-chip multinationals to start-ups, professional service firms, and public and third-sector organisations. She has co-written The Secret Life of Boards and is a former President of the UK Board of the International Coaching Federation (ICF), the largest global coaching professional body.

Nigel Holland

Nigel’s coaching is as stimulating as it is thought-provoking and informed by his own extensive senior international leadership experience at the highest organisational levels. As a trusted sounding Board to executives, teams, and Boards across a wide variety of business sectors, he is renowned for warmly offering a fresh point of view that quickly helps leaders discover new possibilities to move forward.

Being passionate about the power of executive coaching to unlock potential and drive lasting change, Nigel specialises in accelerating leadership development, enhancing self-belief and improving influencing capability.

Una O’Brien

Drawing on 25 years in the UK Civil Service, including as Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, Una understands what it takes to lead in high-consequence political environments with the attendant pressures of ethical decision-making, difficult trade-offs, and public accountability.

Una’s approach is to partner with clients to craft a programme based upon mutual trust, encouraging a focus on deeper self-awareness and expanding capacity to face complex challenges and work relationships. She trained at Henley Business School and holds an accreditation from the International Coaching Federation.

Una’s one-to-one coaching experience encompasses leaders across government including in HM Treasury, the Cabinet Office, the NHS and the UK Parliament. Her portfolio also includes clients in leading regulators, such as the Financial Conduct Authority and the Food Standards Agency.

Una has long experience on Boards as both an executive and non-executive including on the Board of the NHS nationally. Currently, she holds non-executive Board roles at the Ashmolean Museum and the Lloyds Register Foundation and is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Government.

Toy Odiakosa

As a coaching psychologist, Toy draws on her City of London legal background and experience to bring a person and results-focused approach to her work. Drawing on her in-depth knowledge of human and organisational functioning, she excels at supporting individuals and groups facing the unrelenting business and personal challenges of leadership, so that they can achieve their full potential and connect with their authentic selves.

Proactive and optimistic, Toy works in the commercial, public, and third sectors with senior and emerging leaders. Through their sessions with her, they are able to engage with the underused and hidden capabilities needed to develop more effective responses to their environments. In this way, leaders enhance their own learning, skills, performance, well-being. Toy is the author of The Driving Dynamic, Board Performance and Role.

Jo Olsen

Jo has over 20 years’ experience in senior leadership, managing large, complex teams and client portfolios at board level. She began her career in advertising and communications but found her greatest fulfilment in developing leaders and strengthening the conditions for people to excel. She specialises in creating high-performance cultures, where individuals and organisations thrive together.

She partners with C-suite and senior leaders across a range of sectors including retail, hospitality, financial services, technology and creative industries, operating in high-pressure and high-growth settings – often individuals with profound subject-matter mastery who now need to broaden range, influence, and stakeholder capability. Drawing on neuroscience and organisational psychology, she helps clients strengthen psychological safety, build resilience under pressure, and make values-aligned decisions that enable them to navigate complexity and drive impact.

Jo holds the Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC) credential, is a certified Emotional Intelligence practitioner, and an active member of the International Coach Federation with PCC status.

Janet Rubin

Drawing on her experience of more than 20 executive and non-executive roles in both the public and private sectors, Janet offers an extraordinarily rich level of experience to her coaching life. As a current non-executive director with a major NHS Trust and an independent member of the General Pharmaceutical Council, she also brings a 30-year career as a Human Resources Director to work collaboratively with all her clients.

Bringing a genuine, heartfelt enthusiasm for using her skills to help clients achieve their goals, she thrives on seeing them raise their performance and, in turn, raise the performance of their organisations.

For more than a decade, she has coached CEOs, Director Generals, COOs, Directors, Deputy Directors, and Assistant Directors in over 30 organisations spanning financial services, retail, legal, manufacturing, distribution, transport, healthcare, regulation, education, charity, central government, leisure, trade associations and private equity. As a Partner at Praesta, she also co-leads Board Performance Practice.

Peter Shaw

As well as three Director General posts in the UK Government and leadership roles in five Government Departments, Peter has held various Chair and NED roles in education, charities and the private sector.

By basing his coaching on the 4Vs of Vision, Values, Value-add and Vitality, he helps leaders step into more demanding roles than they ever thought possible. Through relaxed and purposeful sessions, Peter enables clients to identify what being bolder and more prepared in challenging situations might mean, while helping them balance work, family and community commitments.

With experience spanning six continents, Peter has coached CEOs of global businesses, public sector bodies and charities, along with Heads of Government Departments, Director Generals, Vice Chancellors, Board Chairs and emerging leaders, as well as working extensively with leadership teams.  He is a Visiting Professor of Leadership Development at HE institutions in the UK and Canada and has written more than 30 influential books, including Shaping Your Future Leadership and The Power of Leadership Metaphors.

Louise Sheppard

Along with leadership roles in Unilever Plc and a management consultancy, Louise has been a trustee of a national charity and on the advisory Board of a social enterprise. Now a highly experienced coach who has worked with more than 100 organisations around the world, she is known for being direct, calm, supportive, challenging and inspiring.

Bringing an evidence-based approach to her role as a coach, Louise employs practical strategies that people can relate to and encourages clients to reframe self-limiting beliefs. She particularly enjoys working with leaders transitioning between roles, and those wanting to amplify their impact and wisdom.

Louise works with organisations of 10 to 200,000 employees and has substantial experience in financial services, FMCG, professional services, engineering, construction, PE, tech, pharma, education, regulation and healthcare. She has a doctorate in Coaching and Mentoring and has written published articles and books on leadership.

Jane Upton

Building on a successful corporate career in International HR, Jane is an accredited Master Executive Coach with more than 20 years of coaching experience. She believes that by applying insights from neuroscience, leaders can better understand their impact and develop their leadership style. As they become more aware of how they make sense of their experience and environment, her clients are able to make conscious choices that enhance their ability to lead effectively in complex situations.

Warm, approachable, and never afraid to challenge, she has earned a reputation for unlocking astonishing personal and professional growth, particularly in individuals and teams who find themselves stuck in limiting habits and beliefs.

In cultivating self-confidence, empowerment and courage, she remains deeply sensitive to multicultural environments and the challenges posed by varying communication styles. Jane has lived in Spain for 30 years and coaches in Spanish and English.

Hande Yaşargil

Drawing from her extensive experience working with executives across various countries and cultures, Hande offers a nuanced approach to leadership development that integrates diverse perspectives. She is also deeply committed to advancing female representation on corporate boards, designing mentoring programs, and coaching senior female executives to enhance their leadership impact in governance.

Hande’s approach combines intellectual rigor with a deep understanding of the human side of leadership and company life. As an Organisational Clinical Psychologist, she works with clients to explore the deeper psychological and systemic dynamics that shape leadership behaviour and organisational effectiveness. Bringing a coaching style that is both reflective and direct, she encourages leaders to confront challenges head-on while fostering deeper self-awareness and resilience in the face of complexity.

Hande’s work is informed by a lifelong dedication to learning. She regularly engages in advanced studies at institutions such as INSEAD, Harvard Kennedy School of Governance and The Tavistock Institute.