Our People

John Leary-Joyce
CEO

John had a successful 25-year career in Gestalt as a practitioner, teacher and trainer at Masters level with appearances on radio and television. Becoming MD of the Gestalt institute in London triggered his entrepreneurial spirit and took him into the business world.



As Founder and CEO, the AoEC is the culmination of his 30 years in the field of training and people development. The AoEC model and structure draws on his academic research and wide experience of Business Leadership, Executive Coaching and Psychotherapy. His passion is the pursuit of learning to help others to grow professionally and personally.

Richard Clarke
Managing Director, Corporate
Richard has 20 years consultancy experience. He was a Director of PricewaterhouseCoopers, an Executive Vice President of Global CRM and Change Management Consultancy and most recently, Managing Director within ActionCOACH’s UK Business. Richard has been involved with coaching since the mid 90’s and was on the Academy’s pioneering advanced programme. Richard has a private Leadership Coaching practice which he delivers across Top European Companies from his home in Italy. He has an honours degree from Imperial College, an MBA and qualifications in Marketing and Executive Coaching.

Sue Pegg
Managing Director, Open Programmes
Sue is Director of Open Programmes at the AoEC. Sue joined the AoEC in June 2005 and has played a key role in the company’s development as a leading provider of executive coaching and coach training. Sue’s background as an international change-oriented business professional provides her with substantial commercial and organisational experience, with over 20 years working for a blue-chip financial services company. Sue has a record of success in project and change management, people development and customer focused roles.

Caroline Hurley
Marketing Director
Caroline has 20 years of commercial experience in marketing director, sales, and business development roles in media and intellectual property businesses. As an experienced senior manager, with a background in both small and large organisations, Caroline is a passionate believer that client relationships are at the heart of business success. Caroline has had a long standing interest in how organisations work and the development needs of individuals. Working with the AoEC provides an opportunity for her to pursue her interest in the field of executive coaching whilst applying her commercial skills to support the future development of the company. Caroline is Marketing Director for the AoEC.

Stephen Daltrey
Director of Executive Coaching
Stephen is a highly experienced executive coach & consultant with over 16 years experience working 1:1, enabling people to achieve their goals. His coaching style utilises his signature presence to offer challenge and support to leaders, raising their awareness of themselves and their impact on relationships and the organisational system. Stephen is Director Executive Coaching at the AoEC, where he leads teams of coaches working in organisations throughout the UK.

Malcolm Frow
Director of Corporate Programmes
Malcolm is Director of Corporate Programmes at the AoEC responsible for In-Company Coach Development. He has worked for fifteen years as a management consultant, executive coach, group facilitator and counsellor with a particular interest in the psychological and systemic processes that underlie individual and organisational success. Before establishing his own consultancy in 1987, he had twenty years of international line experience as a construction manager and corporate banker. He has worked with senior leaders in Europe, the US, Far and Middle East, particularly in the pharmaceutical, financial services and construction sectors. Malcolm is a chartered engineer, has an MBA and a Diploma in Psychosynthesis Counselling. He is also a Visiting Fellow at University College London.

Sarah Cashin
Alumni Manager
Sarah is the Alumni Manager for the AoEC and an Accredited AoEC Intermediate graduate. As an Executive Coach, she specialises in the impact of Change Management. She brings business experience from a number of commercial roles in the FMCG global market including strategy development, project leadership, customer development and business operation.

Elizabeth Ferguson
Master Certified Coach
With over 20 years international corporate experience leading executives and their teams to be their best and achieve outstanding results, Elizabeth founded her own coaching and consulting company, DMA Ltd in 1997 delivering executive coaching, internal coach training, mentoring and supervision programmes to major organisations worldwide. Elizabeth has also developed a particular expertise introducing organisational wide coaching faculties. Clients are largely FTSE 100 companies or equivalent from a wide range of sectors including oil, engineering, IT, media, retail and the public sector. She also has extensive experience in partner development in professional service firms. Her passion for raising and maintaining standards in coaching has led her to be a past President of ICF in the UK, and to chair the international ICF committee responsible for setting policy for professional standards in coaching worldwide.

Marion Gillie
Programme Director
A consultant and coach agent since 1983, Marion is a highly experienced business psychologist - with great in-depth understanding of the complexities of human behaviour in the business setting. She has worked with a wide range of organisations and has extensive experience in the finance sector, retail, IT and manufacturing. Marion is co-founder of The Gillie Partnership and prior to this was a Partner in Sheppard Moscow Ltd, specialists in OD. Marion is Programme Director of the Advanced Diploma and the Master Practitioner Programmes with the AoEC. She is a Chartered Occupational andCounselling Psychologist and has a Masters degree in Organisational Psychology and Gestalt Psychotherapy. She is an APECS Accredited Executive Coach and Supervisor, and has diplomas in Advanced Executive Coaching and in Coach Supervision with the AoEC.

Nick Kitchen
Executive Coach
Nick is an inspirational trainer, conference speaker and consultant who has worked with both small and large British and multinational organisations over the last sixteen years, helping create new ways of working and sustainable change. He is also a senior executive coach, his style working particularly well with dynamic senior people and “high potentials”

Nick was previously New Business Director of international advertising agency TBWA, following a successful career in advertising, sales and marketing. Nick still does a lot of work internationally and this business and customer-focus background still informs much of his work.

As well as classic business approaches, in his work Nick integrates a diverse range of qualifications, models and experience including dynamic creativity and lateral thinking approaches, Neuro Linguistic Programming, Gestalt psychotherapy, Bodywork, transactional analysis and systemic and field theory.

John Parker
Consultant
John is a very experienced sales professional and has been involved in front-line business development for nearly forty years. He carries out training and consultancy assignments for organisations in the UK and internationally, across a whole range of marker places. He is a NLP practitioner, and believes that business should be an enjoyable experience.

Carole Pemberton
Managing Consultant
Carole Pemberton brings to her coaching practice, experience in careers coaching, management development within a business school, organisational consulting and research. She founded Career Matters 8 years ago and now works with leaders and aspiring leaders in a wide range of public sector organisations, and in the finance, pharmaceutical and telecommunications sectors. She brings to her work a desire to help people move beyond blocks in their career, performance and personal development through a grounding in person centred counselling and solution focussed work supported by a range of approaches drawn from her own wide experience of personal development. She has written extensively on people issues in organisations and is author of “Coaching to Solutions: A Manager’s Toolkit for Performance Delivery”.

Marjorie Shackleton
Programme Director
With a psychotherapeutic and advanced coach training background, well honed through extensive experience developing individuals and teams in the US, Canada and the UK, Marjorie works with senior executives in a wide range of organisations with experience across many sectors including professional services, finance and consumer goods. Marjorie is also a trained Coach Supervisor working with individuals and teams in organisations. Marjorie is AoEC Faculty for the Pyschology and the Advanced Diploma programmes and a graduate of the AoEC.

Silvia Tassarotti
MCC accredited coach
Silvia has been a consultant, trainer and coach to major companies for more than 10 years. Her focus is on providing effective development coaching and training, strategic innovative thinking, cross-cultural integration, successful strategic change and leadership programs linked with business benefits. Silvia is one of the co-founders of InnerFly – The Change Partnership Italy, an innovative Italian consulting firm specializing in Executive Coaching and Leadership Development whose main goal is to support organizations in making the most of their talented people. Silvia is President of ICF Italy and co-author of “Coaching” published in 2003.

Hazel Valentine
Management consultant
HAZEL has been working as an Independent Management Consultant, Trainer, Facilitator, Mentor and Coach since 1989. She worked as a Management Consultant with Ernst & Young in their Human Resources practice and Banking & Financial Services practice. Her career has involved her working in the Construction Industry, an American Oil and Gas Company, Recruitment, Head Hunting and Management Consultancy.

She has a wealth of experience in coaching and facilitating groups and has worked with all levels of management. Her consultancy work has involved her with Local Authorities, Financial Services, Life Assurance, Logistics, Manufacturing, Retail and Education.

She has completed a Masters Degree in Human Resource Strategy and Development having researched Action Learning in the Financial Services Industry and was a part-time visiting lecturer at the London Metropolitan University on the Masters programme.

She has a wide experience of coaching, supervising and mentoring people at all levels in both business and the voluntary sector in the UK and Europe. These experiences have been captured in The Performance Coach published by Gower December 2003. The Performance Coach is a fully accredited post graduate certificate in coaching awarded by Middlesex University.

She is currently a member of the faculty for The Academy of Executive Coaching and is Director of their Intermediate Diploma in Executive Coaching. She has a Diploma in Advanced Executive Coaching and is a professional accredited coach with the Academy.

Hazel was nominated for an award as Business Advisor of the Year with the Arts & Business Council South East in 2006.

David Wagstaff
Consultant Coach
David Wagstaff is an independent consultant and coach specialising in Organisational Development and Change.

He works with organisations, groups and individuals to bring about changes in performance to meet business objectives. He is particularly interested in the management challenges facing professional groups and has worked with a number of accountancy & law firms as well as senior management groups in Higher Education and the Health Service.

David has degrees from Durham and London Universities. He is also trained in coaching, counselling and facilitation skills. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Continuing Professional Development and an Associate of the Institute of Management Consultancy.

David is a visiting fellow at Sheffield Business School and is currently completing a PhD in knowledge creation from a perspective informed by the complexity sciences

He is a member of the core faculty of the Academy of Executive Coaching and also undertakes a number of individual and team coaching assignments. He is involved with the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education and contributes to The Top Management Programme for senior university staff.

David lives in London but has worked throughout the UK, Australia, the Far East and the United States.

Peter Wilson
Consultant Coach

Peter is a highly experienced Executive Coach, facilitator and leadership development Consultant.

Peter cut his facilitation teeth representing UK business interests in the United Nations and gained unique insight into working with International and cross-cultural clients. Demand for his work has taken Peter to more than twenty countries in five continents where he has led workshops, presented at major global conferences and chaired international think tanks.

Peter has over fifteen years experience coaching, consulting and facilitating for government, inter-government and private sector companies - especially those in the IT and service industries.

Previous clients include American Express, BSkyB and Nestle. Having held two company directorships prior to setting up his own company, he has hands-on experience in leading highly skilled teams through periods of major change.

Peter loves to employ metaphor as a way of inspiring personal and professional growth. This provides a creative balance to Peter's systems, process and group dynamics training. Using these approaches, he focuses on working with senior executives to bring alignment between who they are and what they do.

Peter has a Diploma (Merit) in Advanced Executive Coaching with the Academy of Executive Coaching. He continues his relationship with the AoEC as a member of the coaching faculty. He has also taken leadership development training at Ashridge Business School and is a certified practitioner both in NLP and the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. He also holds a Masters in International Policy from Bristol University, specialising in group dynamics and organisational change.

Peter lives near Greenwich in London with his wife and three children. He has a passion for photography, cooking and Spanish wine - though not necessarily in that order!