Our People & Values

Jamie Rowland

Co-Founder & Innovative Strategist

Jamie loves helping businesses explore how better leadership capabilities can lead to better results. He is great at listening and asking the objective questions which stimulate new thinking.

He has worked in Learning & Development for years: running his own consultancy, heading up a team for a national business, and managing L&D in a Big Four firm.

Jamie studied leadership at Sandhurst, has a postgraduate diploma in Training & HRM, and holds various psychological qualifications. Home is the countryside of Suffolk where Jamie recharges his batteries, helped by a lovely wife, twin boys, and three mad spaniels.

Flea Rowland

Co-Founder & Transformational Coach

Flea’s passion is to enable people to live a more meaningful and fulfilled life. She firmly believes in self-care being the lynch pin to achieving this.

Throughout her diverse career Flea has identified that she is intrigued by people, the paths they have travelled and the journeys they are yet to make. She loves to accompany people as they discover ways to enhance their journey.

Alongside her Catseye role Flea juggles running a busy household, raising twin boys & struggling to control 3 spaniels whilst finding space to indulge her love of interior design.

Martin Tothill

Creative Energiser

Martin lives to help and grow others to be the best leaders they can and in turn inspire a future generation of followers to do the very same.

People say Martin oozes positivity and helps people create a positive impact and influence those around them. His eclectic career journey and broad life experiences place him in the ideal position of being able to connect with anyone.

Prior to 19 years in people development, he has been a submarine engineer, a professional photographer, and a lecturer in design. He is also qualified in a number of psychological instruments.

Martin has a busy home life as he has realised his dream of renovating a property in France balanced with one foot in the UK he has an entrepreneurial wife, 2 daughters, a dog and cats. He loves to cycle and fish and has been wrestling his beloved guitar for more than 40 years.

Nicola Hainey

Leadership Luminary

Martyn Barmby

Communication & Impact Ninja

Martyn loves to help individuals and organisations translate their talent into success through excellent communication.

Martyn’s background is unique. His ‘sensible’ career has seen him work as a Programme Manager, Operations Director and Managing Director of IT and Management Consultancies in the UK, USA and France. His ‘less sensible’ career as a professional actor has seen him take on an eclectic mixture of roles from Shakespearean lead to Ernie the Elf. He loves to help clients improve their confidence and impact when communicating by using the most advanced techniques from the worlds of acting and business.

Along with his wife and two young daughters Martyn enjoys spending time playing and watching sport. Current favourite in the Barmby family is triathlon which has meant an ever expanding bicycle collection. In summer he captains the parents and teachers’ cricket team at his daughters’ school which has been a case study in diplomacy and valiantly overcoming adversity.

Marissa Makinson-Hall

Frontier Facilitator

Marissa’s passion is facilitation and coaching, she loves nothing better than helping people develop and achieve those lightbulb moments.  With the use of psychometric tools she helps teams and leaders develop to their full potential. Marissa has frequently been told she is fun to work with and brings that fun and energy to the learning she delivers.

She has 20 years of experience working in learning and development and leading highly motivated L&D teams. Marissa brings a global perspective to all that she does having worked in various roles overseas; including Tokyo, Sydney, and New York. She has extensive experience working with diverse teams across the world delivering highly impactful facilitation and has gained an appreciation and understanding of cultural learning preferences. Prior to specialising in learning she was an auditor and later a tax accountant for one of the Big 4 professional services firms. Her experience of client facing roles helps her resonate with the pressure professionals and executives face in their daily working lives.

Marissa lives in the countryside with her husband and beautiful (but naughty) Shetland Sheepdog. Travelling is a real passion and in non-covid times she spends her holidays back-packing in far flung countries travelling like a local, or underwater diving on a quest to see a Whale Shark.

Steven Maddocks

Viscount of Voice

Steven thinks something magical happens when we talk and listen to one other, and he loves showing people how to cast new spells.

Since training as an actor, Steven has worked in almost every area of theatre, including acting, writing, producing and directing, new plays and old. 
In his work as a voice and presentation coach, Steven draws on a range of theatrical techniques to give people tools for brilliant and effective communication. He also draws on his love of language. Although his degree was in English at Oxford (where he was also president of OUDS, the Oxford University Dramatic Society), he speaks several foreign languages. The least useful of these is Cape Verdean Creole, but that’s another story.

With his wife, Steven runs a drama school for children and adults. He has two almost-grown-up children and one very silly dog. They are all crammed into a pretty little cottage in North London.

Marta Abramska

Coaching Queen

Chris Massey

Facilitator & X Cultural Guru

Chris is fascinated by human communication in all its forms, by what makes it go well and what gets in its way. He believes that good communication lies at the heart of learning, human development and strong relationships. As a trainer and facilitator, Chris specialises in helping people communicate better across cultures by learning to flex their own thinking and behaviour. He also helps people develop transferable life skills such as navigating difficult conversations, innovative problem-solving, facilitating groups.

Since heading to rural Japan straight after graduation, Chris has spent the ensuing twenty-something years working globally, living for more than 10 years outside his native UK and working across more than 60 countries. He has also bridged the cultural divides of the commercial, public and social sectors, always with an international slant. He has recruited and managed multinational teams, organised international corporate events and coordinated global professional networks.

Chris holds an MA in Intercultural Communication and is also a qualified EFL teacher. He speaks Japanese and somewhat rusty German, and occasionally teaches native English speakers how to use their own language more effectively in international contexts.

After much globe-trotting and five circumnavigations of the globe in a boat, Chris returned to his native UK in 2012. He now lives with his Japanese partner in southeast London. However he’s still a country-boy at heart and escapes the gravitational pull of the city in his free time to hike, bike and camp in the great outdoors.

Rose Paul

Nutritional Mentor

Rose is a registered nutritional therapist who works with her clients to create completely personalised, realistic and evidence based health plans.

She passionately believes that fad diets and extreme food restrictions are not the answer to improving health.

Alongside her clients she targets the root cause of underlying imbalances that may be impacting health and then applies solutions through the lens of each person’s life, work, family and goals.

Complementing her nutritional focus, Rose is a trained landscape gardener and loves to grow, create and cook fresh nutritional meals for her family and friends.

Alec Nicholls

Workout Specialist

Alec loves to focus on practical-based learning – doing it rather than just talking about it.

Over 16 years he has built a wealth of experience in the private and public sector as a facilitator and coach, offering communication skills development through practice. He continues to work as an Actor with many TV, Film and theatre credits. He applies many of those skills providing support, development and feedback to help people build on their personal impact and style.

As Alec says: ” performers will rehearse, athletes will train, and musicians will practise. Everyone in their particular field of work can take the opportunity to prepare in the same way.”

After 20 years living under the Heathrow flight-path Alec and his family now live in the countryside. He spends a lot of his time in wellies and is resisting the temptation to carry a stick with him when in the city. Local farmers still refer to him as ‘townie’.

Dana James-Edwards

EDI Expert

Dana is an Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) expert who helps companies build diverse brands and create inclusive cultures where team members want to stick around. She has worked across a wide range of industries and organisations – from startups to government agencies, leading consultancies and titans of industry. Dana has designed and developed EDI programmes and initiatives, shaped policies and helped companies get to grips with their diversity reality by uncovering and providing solutions for the things getting in the way of creating a workforce reflective of the world we live in.

When it comes to learning in the EDI space, Dana believes that engaging sessions that captivates learners result in key learning points that are remembered for much longer, and make it back to the workplace where they can bring about real change.  Her workshops are interactive, engaging and informative, with actionable, real outcomes you can put into practice immediately. She brings content, theory and evidence-based approaches alongside insights into lived experiences and stories. Diversity and Inclusion is an emotive topic, so she works hard to create a space that is safe and supportive to enable learning. This approach encourages dialogue, and gives participants the chance to explore, enquire, discuss and find their own learning.

Dana is also proud Mum to young twin boys.

Sophia Taylor

Thinking Partner

Sophia really loves coaching! She is fascinated by people and enjoys working with different characters to help them achieve their potential. Through careful listening and a variety of different tools and activities, Sophia helps present clients with a different perspective to open up their thinking and help them move from where they are to where they want to be. It’s a journey she feels privileged to be a part of.

Sophia’s whole career has been based around people and talent and she has worked for some amazing brands along the way.

Alongside coaching Sophia spends time running, gardening and reading and can usually be found at the home she shares with her husband, two boys, one untrainable border terrier and four chickens!

Simon Dickins

Motivational Evangelist

A 20-year career in sales, sales management and recruitment within Financial Services and Media kept Simon mulling over the oft observed career conflict between money and meaning.

With his curiosity getting the better of him, he turned his back on his corporate life in 2016 and dedicated himself to helping companies to retain and engage their best people, specifically through a deep understanding of motivation and its relationship to people-centric leadership and performance.

Simon holds a First-Class business degree from the University of Salford, is a Certified Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and a Licensed Practitioner of Motivational Maps.  A passion for cycling means that Simon owns a dangerous amount of Lycra, and when not in the saddle he enjoys helping his wife to manage the conflict between his young boys!

Katie Thorpe

Learning Design Legend

Katie is a guru in creating learning that sticks. Combining deep knowledge of learning design with a warm and engaging style, she is happiest when turning complex concepts into memorable learning experiences.

Prior to her move into freelancing she spent 13 years at professional services firm Deloitte, training first as an auditor and then moving to the global learning group. Whilst there she worked as a learning designer, facilitator and coach, with responsibility for running international learning programs.

More recently, she has acted as learning and development adviser to the Institute for Government, a think tank aiming to make government more effective. With expertise in developing learning tools from simple job-aids to complex simulation workshops, she selects the most effective strategies for embedding knowledge, skills and behaviour change.

A highly experienced facilitator, Katie has worked with groups ranging from politicians to schoolchildren. There is less difference than you’d think.

Katie sings in a choir and sometimes has to be gently reminded she is humming out loud when she is not busy with her twin boys.