OUR TEAM & EXPERIENCE
Led by Veronica Burke, our team draws on decades of international experience with a varied client base, utilising a range of business and performance psychology disciplines. Clients include the BBC, Barclays, The Teenage Cancer Trust and Sadlers Wells Theatre.
Working across SMEs, not-for-profit and blue-chip organisations, our practice has seen us deliver on a wide range of topics from personal impact and brand to improving resilience, coaching for performance, constructive conflict management and courageous conversations. We have a strong track record of peer-reviewed executive education research and we believe in using an evidence-based approach to inform the design of our development programmes.
Meet the team
Veronica Burke
Mike Meldrum
Mick Earle
Sarah Cartwright
Jill Cottee
Martyn Haworth
Dr Veronica Burke
Founder & Director
BH (Hons) PGCE MA PhD FHEA
Veronica is an experienced learning, development and education specialist with more than twenty years of experience working in academia and consulting with multi-national businesses. Veronica has held senior faculty roles at Ashridge Business School and Cranfield University School of Management and now a Visiting Fellow at Cranfield, Veronica is known for her engaging and innovative style. Her approach, grounded in applied and practical work, focuses on leadership development, organisational change and personal performance.
Veronica is an accredited practitioner in the MBTI, SDI, FIRO-B, ECI and in the BPS Levels 1 and 2. Working in close partnership with her clients, Veronica designs and delivers bespoke learning and development experiences that enable executives to achieve meaningful organisational contribution.
Veronica has published in several peer-reviewed academic journals and has a particular interest in optimising personal contribution and wellness at work. She has also authored several book chapters, conference papers and practitioner articles. She has a PhD. in management development, a Master’s degree in physical education, a postgraduate certificate in teaching and an honours degree from the University of London. She is also a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. Veronica loves sport and is currently studying for a Diploma in Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy.
Mike Meldrum
Development Consultant
MBA BA(Hons) Dip. Marketing
Cert.Ed Intermediate Dip. Exec Coaching
Mike is an executive development consultant focused on executive coaching, tailored executive programmes and broad development consultancy. He has worked with CEOs, leadership teams and individual managers on a variety of issues including strategy creation and personal development.
Mike was previously a Senior Lecturer at Cranfield School of Management specialising in leadership, marketing and strategy, and personal managerial effectiveness. Before leaving in 2003, Mike ran Cranfield’s Business Leaders Programme for five years, representing their most senior offering; he continues to work at Cranfield in a number of capacities. As a member of the Cranfield Trust, he provides pro bono support to charities on an ad hoc basis.
Mike’s clients have ranged from large international corporations to not-for-profit enterprises and smaller family businesses. He brings significant experience of different circumstances, situations and challenges that both businesses and managers face.
As a qualified executive coach, Mike’s 1-2-1 clients include many he has maintained for several years. Mike is widely published in marketing and management development journals, and has written a monthly blog on leadership which can be accessed via his LinkedIn profile. In his spare time, he writes pantomime scripts.
Mick Earle
Development Consultant
For the past thirty years, Mick has focussed on leadership assessment and development, team development, graduate development, behavioural change, post-operational stress management, culture bridging and talent management. He has achieved this through creating programmes, events and seminars for groups as diverse as international senior management teams, serving members of the Armed Forces, corporate teams and departments, civil servants and prisoners.
Mick is an established subject matter expert in the use of challenge, adventure, creative problem solving and activity-based learning with extensive experience working with an extremely broad brush of national and international clients in the UK and internationally (US, Europe, Scandinavia, Malaysia, Hong Kong).
Mick lives in the Derbyshire Peak District, is an active cave explorer with over 40 years experience and is the current Chairman and one of 5 Incident Controllers with the Derbyshire Cave Rescue Organisation.
Sarah Cartwright
Development Consultant
Sarah is a qualified Executive Coach with a Diploma in Leadership Mentoring and Executive Coaching from the Institute of Leadership and Management. She is also a member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council. Utilising skills gained as an actor, Sarah combines her coaching and communication capabilities to help people develop their personal brand and presence. Sarah’s coaching focuses on change, action and achieving desired goals.
Sarah designs and delivers programmes the focus of which includes: Presenting With Impact, Courageous Conversations, Assertiveness, and Influencing With Impact. She has a strong track record of working with senior and high potential people, helping them to develop the skills and confidence to raise their impact and influence. Sarah is a co-founder of Verve Women, an organisation that reflects her passion for helping women to achieve their career goals and realise their full potential. She is also an associate of CSW Inc, a US-based company that focuses on unconscious bias and cross-cultural awareness.
Sarah works globally with her clients which include The Parliamentary Strategic Unit, The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, The British Library, The Royal College of Art and Microsoft.
Jill Cottee
Development Consultant
MBA BSc(Eng) Hons Dip.Marketing PG.Cert Coaching
Jill is an experienced management professional, consultant and executive coach. Prior to becoming a consultant, she worked for Akzo Nobel as a Marketing Manager, later studying for an MBA at Cranfield School of Management, where she was the Tasmin Cup winner.
Subsequently Jill worked with a number of organisations as a consultant focusing on business and marketing strategy as well as management development. In addition, Jill accepted a role as Strategic Planning Director for HPS Group, a large regional marketing agency based in Marlow, where she worked for several years.
Since graduating in engineering at Imperial College, Jill has worked with people from many different disciplines in a broad range of sectors including senior managers and leadership teams in organisations from the public, private and voluntary sectors. Her approach to business is pragmatic and draws on the realities of an organisation’s situation and processes. Key to her work is the identification of the journey required by clients to deliver greater impact both as an individual and as an organisation.
At the personal level, Jill's approach is grounded in a cognitive behavioural approach focusing on the analysis of factual evidence to uncover inconsistencies and underlying assumptions that influence habitual and often unhelpful responses to situations.
Martyn Haworth
Development Consultant
Martyn has been an executive development consultant for more than ten years and during this time he has helped to develop the skills of over 2000 line-managers. During the last three years alone, Martyn has facilitated in excess of 250 active learning sessions via video conferencing for some of the world’s leading tech companies.
Martyn balances his hands-on commercial experience with his expertise in coaching and facilitating, often working with senior executives. At the age of twenty-three, he managed large out-of-town superstores for a FTSE 100 retailer, progressing to become their youngest ever regional director, with responsibility for a £180m sales budget and more than 600 employees. Later he was appointed to the retailer's Executive Management Team.
Martyn's career continued to advance into group operational roles including leading a team of internal performance coaches which helped deliver significant cultural change.
Martyn left corporate life in 2007 to become a business coaching franchise-owner working with organisations on creating missions, visions and values, as well as supporting them in developing strategies while implementing new systems and processes. Additional areas of Martyn's expertise include change management, influencing skills and creating high performing teams.