Our Friends
Overcome today's challenges
We are blessed to know some really inspirational people, all changing the world of work for the better. Each has their own specialism and their own unique charm and we’re really proud to share their creds with you – in case you have a need for them in your business.
Come and meet our friends
Kate Usher - Second Phase
We love Kate’s work. Natasha first met Kate when she was writing her book and was amazed by what women have to go through when it comes to the menopause. Kate is a menopause and Relationships Coach and author of Your Second Phase (2020), a brilliant book which sheds light on the challenging world of menopause.
Kate works with women and organisations, assisting them to have open and informed conversations at home and in the workplace, to manage their symptoms and to positively prepare themselves for the second phase of their womanhood. Kate previously had a successful corporate career as a Project Manager for FTSE 100 companies and had a shock when it came to deal with her own menopause. It’s led her to help other women navigate this inevitable period in life a little more easily.
For more information, please visit secondphase.co.uk
Neil Usher - workessence
Neil is leading the way on the workplace of the present and future - physical and digital - and change leadership.
With over 25 years in the industry as a property, workplace and change leader, Neil has delivered innovative environments for organisations in a variety of sectors, all over the world. He is now Chief Workplace Officer for GoSpace, the first AI application for the workplace. Together with this practical experience, his influential blog and regular conference talks have made him a leading thinker in the profession. His first book The Elemental Workplace was published in March 2018 and the second book Elemental Change will be published in September 2020.
For more information, please visit workessence.com
Elaine Carnegie - Being Works
Elaine Carnegie is a passionate spokesperson and advocate for creating more human and compassionate workplaces throughout the UK. She is dedicated to helping organisations look deeper into the root causes of employee challenges rather than just addressing surface symptoms, believing that workplace mental health and wellbeing requires an approach that offers initiatives at the level of individual behaviour change and individual inner change as well as shared systemic and cultural practices.
She has a strong interest in the study and practice of self-compassion, mindfulness and resilience and how these can shape our ability to cope more successfully with life challenges, including those presented in the workplace. Elaine firmly believes compassion to be a powerful catalyst in helping to create more human, open and inclusive workplaces. Elaine’s company Beingworks offers coaching, consulting and training for mental health & wellbeing at work.
For more information, please visit beingworks.co.uk
Andre Berry - Andre Berry Meditation
Andre is an amazing mediation teacher.
Challenged by the relentless pressures of corporate life, losing his father compounded agony on top of frustration. This created sleepless nights and an all-round knowing that if his fast-paced lifestyle wasn’t addressed, illness would surely follow. After hearing about the benefits of Transcendental Meditation (TM), he decided to learn the technique Independently and was blown away by the changes.
Andre was amazed by his reduced anxiety and his increased resilience to everyday challenges. More at peace with himself than ever before, he immersed himself further into the Vedic tradition from which it stemmed from. 10 years on Andre has become a much sought-after Independent Teacher of Transcendental Meditation, teaching in London and Bristol.
For more information, please visit andreberrymeditation.co.uk
Perry Timms - PTHR
Perry is the master of starting conversations that spark new and exciting ideas. He is the founder of PTHR, a conscious business consulting enterprise, with a mission to create better business for a better world. Micro in size, but macro in outlook; a connected and collaborative group of people professionals bringing agility, autonomy and alignment to some of the business world’s most perplexing and paradoxical challenges.
Fusing inclusion, innovation, and inspiration to help teams in HR, OD, Change, Learning and Performance through adapted methods in:
• Agile & Scrum approach for Organisation Design and change.
• Progressive Business Models, Strategy & Leadership for clarity & confidence.
• Talent & Organisation Development for sustainable and responsive people & systems.
Compressed pieces of discovery, advisory and design work that enables, equips and sparks people to build responsive systems of change, collective beliefs and capabilities so that clients and partners can design their own energised workplaces, where people flourish.
For more information, please visit pthr.co.uk
Rob Baker - Tailored Thinking
We’re a big fan of founder Rob Baker who is world-leading when it comes to bringing job crafting to life within organisations. His work, ideas and research on how people can personalise work and bring their whole and best selves to the workplace have been presented at academic and professional conferences around the globe.
Rob is founder of Tailored Thinking a positive psychology, wellbeing and HR consultancy with a mission to make work better, and make better work, using evidence-based practice. As a senior HR leader and consultant, Rob has delivered sector-leading and award-winning people initiatives and business transformation projects working with companies across sectors ranging from multi-national banks to digital start-ups.
For more information, please visit tailoredthinking.co.uk
David Beeney - Breaking the silence
David is doing an amazing job of removing the stigma associated with mental health in the workplace. He has established himself as one of the leading advisers in the UK on how to drive employee engagement through an effective wellbeing programme and is listed as a top global influencer. David specialises in creating kinder, inclusive, and trusting cultures free from the stigma of mental health.
David speaks with great credibility about mental health as he suffered in silence with his own struggles for over 30 years. He is also a trustee for Mind and is a qualified counsellor. David helps employers to discover the direct link between employee wellbeing and energy. As a consequence, more boardrooms are now realising that investing in their people will drive productivity and business results.
For more information, please visit breakingthesilence.co.uk
Gethin Nadin - Benefex
Gethin is co-chair of the Engage for Success Wellbeing Thought Action Group and one of the groups’ founding members alongside Natasha. Gethin is a psychology graduate who has been helping some of the world’s largest organisations to improve their employee experience and wellbeing for almost two decades. The last 9 years have been spent working as part of the senior leadership team at Benefex.
In 2018, Gethin published his first book – the award winning HR bestseller ‘A World of Good: Lessons From Around the World in Improving the Employee Experience’, which has gone on to inspire HR and Reward teams at some of the world’s best-known brands. As a frequent writer and keynote speaker on employee experience and employee wellbeing, Gethin has been featured in The Guardian, The Huffington Post and The Financial Times as well as major HR, Reward and Pensions publications Gethin is listed on the Employee Engagement Powerlist and is one of the world’s Top 1010 Employee Engagement Influencers.
For more information, please visit hellobenefex.com
Quentin Millington
Millington has a way of cutting through the complexity of something to get to the heart of a problem which is why we enjoy working with him. He equips FTSE-100 and other multinational companies to overcome industry disruption and create sustainable value.
With thoughtful, relevant ideas Quentin enables senior teams to agree and set out new strategies. He supports departments to build bridges within a culture of well-being and performance. And he mentors executives to develop leadership resilience and capability. Quentin makes sense of complex questions using plain English.
As Chief Operating Officer and in related roles at tier-one investment banks, with budgets over US$100m Quentin led multidiscipline, client-facing teams of up to 130 people. He also ran, across US$1bn businesses of more than 1,000 employees, global initiatives to increase revenue, enhance service, and cut cost.
For more information, please visit marblebrook.com
Steve Hargreaves
Steven has extensive experience as a senior leader and coach, having worked across a range of sectors, leading and modernising large scale, multi-site operations across commercial, regulated care and charitable services. Steven has a strong operational focus with experience at Director level in leading and developing large, geographically dispersed teams across the UK.
With a background in leadership, organisational development and wellbeing, Steven develops and delivers management & leadership development programmes that elevate individual and team performance.
He has been described as a pioneer in the ‘freedom to speak up’ movement, working to build psychologically safe team cultures, where employee well-being and improving emotional culture has been a major focus. His coaching work helps leaders and teams to reflect, rethink, adapt, to get comfortable with volatility and to respond to change more effectively through enhanced capability, connectivity and resilience.
Tab Parry
We have had the pleasure of working with Tab for over 3 years now. She’s been with us since the very beginning and creating the brand identity for Conscious Works. We continue to work together, on digital marketing and so much more!
Tab is one of the co-founders and the lead designer at Barr Media – a full-service digital marketing agency specialising in creative websites, branding and all things digital. Barr Media are masters of removing the stress from marketing projects and bring a huge wealth of energy and experience to all projects. They’re a small, nimble team with a big passion and most importantly, heaps of purpose.
For more information, please visit barr.media
Together we are helping to build 'employers of choice'.
There's a growing community of us working hard to create human workplaces that people want to be a part of. With a deep understanding of human needs and what brings out the best in us, we're enabling happy, healthy and high performing people and cultures.
Latest on the Journal
"We have really strengthened our team with Natasha’s support. Natasha gets people, what drives them, and what they need to do good work. She creates the space and sparks the conversations that remove the barriers getting in the way of being better. Natasha's connection with people and her ability to build great relationships means that the team feels supported and encouraged to be at their best. Natasha’s talks attract large audiences and get great feedback. We can grow our business knowing that the team is getting the support they need to thrive given Natasha’s help."
"Natasha has the ability to start powerful new conversations and opened our eyes to how we could create a more open and inclusive culture where people can speak up and stay connected. We asked Natasha to help us to build coaching capability in the team, but we got so much more. Natasha understands people and their behaviour which means that she can see the things that you won't always see yourself.'
"Natasha came to AspenTech to lead the Women’s Leadership Forum’s workshop on Bridging Cultural Differences. She brilliantly ran the session highlighting how to avoid stereotypes and how important it is to bridge both linguistic barriers and cultural gaps in the workplace. I am very lucky to have met Natasha. Why? She is very talented, establishes quick connection with her audience and is able to transform complex concepts into easy messages for everyone to understand. We all left that workshop with a light heart."
"Natasha is engaging, funny, clear and personable and is an expert in developing leadership skills and improving organisational wellbeing. I asked Natasha to speak at our key client conference on unconscious bias and diversity and we had fantastic feedback from the event with Natasha’s session highlighted as one of the best sessions of the day. I have also attended one of Natasha’s more intimate workshops where she was a facilitator and she was able to engender trust within the group to be open and honest so that they could reflect on where they needed to develop."
"Natasha shared her own personal story in an incredibly engaging, honest and down to earth style, and then chaired a lively debate on "Balance vs Burnout - finding the harmony between work and personal life". There was a great turnout for the event and we received only positive feedback and I wouldn't hesitate to work with Natasha again."