Our People & Values

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 6 and 8-year-old boys!

Georgie Dickins

Leadership Coach & Smiler-in-Chief

Georgie’s mission is to empower talented people, unlock their motivation and help them realise their potential.

She has a wealth of experience successfully working with people in fast-paced and challenging corporate cultures, previously enjoying a 20-year career in client-facing roles at leading City firms, including Reuters, Lehman Brothers, JPMorgan and ICAP.

Georgie holds a business degree from Loughborough University and is a Practitioner of Transformational Coaching and Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
Based in Suffolk, and no longer navigating a 4-hour commute into London every day, Georgie gets to spend more quality time with her husband, 2 boys and Gus the dog.

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.

Dana James-Edwards

Super Facilitator

Dana is focused on delivering engaging and inspirational training, to ensure that key learnings make it from the classroom to the workplace.

Dana is best described as a ball of pure energy – her personality lights up a classroom and draws participants in. She is a natural storyteller and loves developing the storytelling abilities of others alongside communication skills and personal impact. She is also fascinated by psychological tools and loves to use them in team-building scenarios.

She brings her considerable experience in professional services and consultancy, working on large-scale systems implementations and high-impact transformational projects to the Change and Project Management workshops she facilitates.

As a Caribbean native, Dana loves sun and sea, but as the London weather rarely cooperates and she’s a bit far away from the coast in her London home. she compromises by swimming as often as she possibly can. If she’s not in a classroom you’ll probably find her at the nearest pool.

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.

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 17 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.

Based in Brighton, Martin has a busy home life with an entrepreneurial wife, 2 daughters, a dog and over 250,000 bees. He loves to cycle, surf, and fish and has been wrestling his beloved guitar for more than 40 years.

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.

Jamie Rowland

MD & Creative 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 two mad spaniels.

He is a strong advocate of local produce and is a co-founder of Eastern Minds, a forum for business leaders in the food industry where he also keeps his commercial acumen up to speed.

Debbie Norman

Professional Role-player

Debbie enjoys the challenge of developing people and sowing the seeds of change.

Debbie’s background is in theatre and television as dancer / actress / choreographer, spanning more years than she cares to remember! The key expertise Debbie brings into the corporate world is her acute observations and insights into behaviours.

For the last 16 years’ she has been working in the business arena, predominantly as a role-player but also as a facilitator with a wide range of organisations, from blue-chip global engineering companies to NHS Trusts.

She has one son, literally following in her footsteps, as a professional dancer. She likes to spend her non-working waking hours at Pilates classes or on her allotment.

Ross McIntosh

Business Psychologist

Ross is fascinated by how the power of the mind informs everyday leadership and he actively explores this dynamic space with on-going research and analytics.

Ross worked in central Government for over 20 years in a senior HR Role where he coached senior leaders, delivered award winning Assessment Centres and led complex change projects. He left government in 2014 to pursue an MSc in Organisational Psychology and is now dedicated to using evidence-based behavioural science to enhance leadership effectiveness through coaching and training.

He is also a Senior Research Associate at City University and is managing studies exploring personal resilience and psychological well-being in teachers and the NHS as well as designing training interventions.

He lives in Brighton with his husband, the Spanish photographer, Manel Ortega and their whippet, Basil. He also enjoys cartooning and has quite a following which resulted in a solo exhibition in Brighton in 2015.

Flea Rowland

Ops Director

Flea is super-organised and keeps the Catseye machine on the road.

In her London days she gained experience in retail and publishing, before becoming an account manager in advertising, then heading up fundraising and event management for a hospice, and going on to work for a national charity.

In Suffolk, she has project managed the build of a house, indulged her inner interior designer, and helped Catseye get off the ground. She now juggles running a busy household and bringing up twin boys with her Catseye role.

Her cool head and solid project management skills keep us all grounded and on point.

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’.

Paddy Bishopp

Entrepreneurial Warrior

Paddy is an entrepreneurial leader who loves sharing his life experiences to inspire others to be more creative business leaders.

After working in London in sales and marketing, including launching a financial services online auction site, Paddy moved to East Anglia to follow his passion for food and drink.

First saw the launch of Eat Anglia in 2004, a food and drink home delivery service, followed by his award winning Café/Deli. The judges highlighted the quality of the coffee so when his coffee roaster moved abroad he saw an opportunity to launch a young, trendy vibrant coffee company.

In 10 years it has become the fastest growing independent coffee company in the UK supplying Waitrose, Tesco and over 700 Deli’s, hotels and restaurants, and businesses. It is the only coffee company in The Accelerate 250 list – the UK’s top 250 dynamic companies, geared for growth.

Recently Paddy sold his shares in Paddy & Scott’s to work on new projects that include Bubble and Squid, a street food and restaurant concept; and has also joined a wine company to set up a new brand that will engage with millennials to tap into their wine drinking habits.

With his mix of energy and top networking prowess, Paddy has shared his story as a brand-builder and mentored other leaders both in the UK and overseas.

Alan Cowan

Professional Role-player

Alan is great at challenging individuals to discover their best self.

After graduating from Manchester University with an Honours degree in Drama and then plunging straight into a career on the stage, Alan made the move from the professional theatre into the corporate training world about twenty years ago, starting off with role play but soon combining this with facilitation skills. His typical work ranges from taking individual clients through short Impact or Presentation Skills sessions to guiding large groups through longer residential programmes. He is familiar with various psychometric tools, and also has an advanced diploma in Executive Coaching with the AOEC.

He is also rapidly becoming an expert vegetable grower as a rather large allotment takes up most of his spare time.