We have a hand picked team of coaches experienced in working with working parents and families. In working with us they become part of our Wellbeing community, receiving ongoing supervision, coaching and training.
They seek to enhance the performance, productivity and quality of life of individuals, organisations and community through excellence in their education, research and above all, practice.
Gina Burns
Gina has extensive experience in leadership development, coaching, talent and management assessment, particularly within the context of organisational change. She has worked as a Business Psychologist, Coach and Consultant since 2001 and previous to that has held a number of Learning & Development and consultancy roles, working predominantly within the financial and technology business sectors. In her last corporate role she was European Learning & Development Manager for Nortel Networks with a particular focus on building leadership capability and talent management. As a coach she is particularly interested in developing female leaders and those identified as ‘talent’ within organisations, supporting them in engaging well at work and home and achieving their potential in both.
She is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist with an MSc from the University of Hertfordshire, qualified in the use of psychometrics and holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Coaching and Mentoring from Oxford Brookes University.
Gina has a particular interest in strengths based coaching and positive psychological interventions in coaching. She has conducted research in using these techniques in coaching for women in career transition and post maternity.
Gina is a working mum with three children; she lives in Bristol with her family.
Mary Musselbrook
Mary is an experienced and qualified coach and occupational psychologist. She has worked as a leadership coach for 9 years and she holds an MSc in organisational change and is qualified as a coaching supervisor.Her early career was as a consultant business psychologist with PCS Ltd and then KPMG Management Consulting, working with senior management and board level clients across a wide spectrum of organisations. Subsequently, she joined an international drinks company where her roles included Employee and Organisation Development Manager and Director of Human Resources. Mary is at the top of her game as an executive coach and has a particular specialist interest in working with senior women particularly in times of transition. She has extensive experience in the banking, consulting and media sectors.
Mary has a deep understanding of organisational life and direct experience of the personal challenges and dilemmas that perplex and stretch leaders. Her approach is described as calm, professional and engaging – blending constructive challenge and empathy. Mary creates a working partnership with the coachee, drawing on an integrated range of models and theories. She balances insightful exploration with a focus on outcomes and personal growth.
Mary is a working mum with two teenage sons. For her she says the challenges and rewards of being a working parent continue – the current challenge being the GSCE and A level phase!
Lucy Ryan
Founding Director of Mindspring Consultancy Limited, a training and coaching consultancy, Lucy is recognised as one of the UK’s foremost executive coaches, specialising in the development of confidence for women at all stages of their career and life. Typically, clients who work with Lucy are looking to develop their personal impact; gain a realistic work/family lifestyle; win back their confidence in the boardroom; receive honest feedback; develop a work ‘route map’ and improve their influencing and presentation skills. To this end, she is a certified as an NLP, Emotional Intelligence and Strengths Deployment Practitioner.
Lucy is also one of only a handful of people in Europe with an MSc in Applied Positive Psychology and is at the forefront of the development of positive psychology in Europe. Together with the University of East London, Lucy is also currently engaged in the creation of an Emotional Resilience Curriculum for Newham PCT with her book, ‘Well Being Lessons for Secondary Schools’ being published later this year. She is also a Senior Lecturer at the University of East London and specialises in the application of positive psychology to organisations, with a particular emphasis on coping with stress and developing resilience.
Recognised for her vitality, creativity and warmth, Lucy is passionate about developing people so that their confidence and natural talents grow and flourish. She has two girls, 16 & 15 years old.
Sharon Charlton-Thompson
Sharon is an experienced and sought after executive coach specialising in the field of working parents, maternity and paternity coaching since 1988. She works with our clients to retain and maximize the performance of their working parent population. She is passionate about helping working parents to improve their performance and fulfillment at work and home.
Sharon has a reputation for being a motivating and inspiring senior coach, working with many blue chip clients, both in the UK and overseas. Her clients say that they admire most her mix of intelligence, commercial understanding, warmth, fun and psychological depth. She is experienced in working at times of executive derailment, times of transition, pre and post maternity and paternity; work life balance, stepping up into leadership and relationship issues.. She is experienced in many sectors and her client list is rich in Pharmaceutical, Marketing, Financial and Human Resources experience.
Her coaching philosophy is borne from a mix of her commercial skills and her training and experience in psychology. Prior to working as a coach she worked in merchant banking in the media sector. This was followed by a successful career in advertising working on multinational business progressing to board level. Sharon has also worked with children and families in the public sector and in clinical practice, supporting mums, dads and families with the challenges of modern family life. She is a trained facilitator of parenting courses by the Institute of Fun and Families and she continues CPD in this field and has a particular interest in early infant attachment and development, achieving authentic leadership and the myriad of subjects that together make for the common working parent challenges.
Sharon is a highly qualified ‘Advanced Executive Coach’ achieving distinction at Masters level with the Oxford School of Coaching and Mentoring. She holds a post graduate diploma in Emotional Intelligence having trained for three years in this discipline. She has trained in systemic and family psychotherapy, transactional analysis and to practitioner level in NLP. She has been a qualified MBTI administrator since 2003 and a Coach supervisor since 2006. She is an active member of the British Psychological Society Special Group in Coaching, member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council and the Association of Systemic Psychotherapists. As such she is committed to the high standards and professional ethics promoted by these organisations.
Sharon is a pioneer in the field of maternity and paternity coaching. Described by Radio 4 as the UK’s only bona fide parent coach. Her work is featured in National press and she is a frequent speaker on maternity and paternity issues. At TWPC Sharon is our Head of Coaching Services. She is responsible for the selection and continuing professional development of our coaching team. She runs regular group supervision for our coaches and leads the ongoing CPD process.
She lives in Bath with her husband and her six year old adopted daughter, Tilly.
Kate Adie
Kate works with Executive managers leading teams through change and professional women in times of transition. By working explicitly with their lived experiences Kate helps them learn how to deal with work and life challenges more effectively, be able to transfer their learning into day-to-day reality to create positive new habits and behaviours needed to achieve business results.
Kate became an accredited coach with the Institute of Human Development (IHD) in 2003. The coaching she has provided has enabled: increased relationship and communication skills; an increase in personal resilience under pressure and in times of uncertainty, and an increase in self-belief and confidence to lead themselves and others through change. Her client’s say that her combination of professional expertise, intellectual dexterity and strong interpersonal skills make her an engaging and stimulating person to work with.
Kate’s coaching is tailored to meet the individual client and may involve, alongside one to one sessions, any or all of the following: 360 interviews, observation and behavioural profiling assessments. Kate is accredited to use Human Synergistic’s Life Styles Inventory and Behavioural Science’s Momentum Continuous Performance Improvement (MCPI) profiling tools. Prior to becoming an accredited coach Kate was a management consultant with Accenture and then Corven Consulting where she specialised in leadership development and coaching,working in a variety of sectors including: public sector, banking, retail, telecoms and utilities.
Kate holds a BSc (Hons) in Psychology at St Andrews University and a Masters in Management Learning and Leadership (MAMLL) at Lancaster University. There she completed two pieces of research;‘ First time motherhood and a sense of control’; and ‘Maternity Transition: A study of the underlying issues’. Kate has presented to female employees and the executive team of Alvarez and Marsal on ‘What can boost women in Leadership’ and in June, and was a guest speaker at their external breakfast seminar on “Making the Right Choices and Still Getting to the Top”.
Kate is married to James and lives in London with two young boys, Victor and Benjamin.
Amanda Alexander
Formerly working in the IT industry, Amanda retrained as a coach after experiencing coaching herself whilst on maternity leave. Having a crisis of confidence and wondering how she would juggle a demanding career with being a mum, her own coach helped her explore her options and grow her confidence as a new mum. So impressed was she by the benefits of coaching, Amanda retrained as a coach herself.
She is now one of relatively few professionally trained coaches in the World to hold PCC (Professional Certified Coach) accreditation from the ICF (International Coach Federation) and has over 1,000 hours demonstrable client coaching hours experience working with people globally and from many different backgrounds and organisations.
Amanda’s prime areas of executive coaching expertise are career progression, leadership, work life balance, home-based entrepreneurialism, maternity/return to work and time management. She regularly delivers workshops and seminars both in person and virtually. She has a high media presence as an expert on work life balance and working parents’ issues.
Amanda has appeared in many broadsheets and glossies including The Sunday Telegraph, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent, Prima, Eve, BBC Parenting to name but a few and is frequently interviewed on BBC Radio.
Amanda’s coaching style is described by her clients as “warm, empathetic, insightful and challenging”. She knows the demands and uncertainties of parenthood, and passionately believes that “happy parents equal happy kids”.
