Who We Are...
Simon Westwood
Director
Karlyn Stephen
Director
Simon Westwood
Founder & Director
Simon Westwood
Director
Simon has spent over 20years as a consultant specialising in Leadership Development, Team Dynamics & Culture, Personal Impact & Influence, Presentation & Pitching and Effective Communications. Simon is an accredited ILM Level7 Executive Coach, holds the CIPD Certificate in Training Practice as well as training as an ‘SDI’ (Strengths Deployment Inventory) and ‘Tetramap’ facilitator. He is also a 'Squadify' Pro (Team Dynamics).
After beginning his working life off in the Insurance industry, the time came for Simon to follow his childhood passion of becoming a professional actor. He trained at the prestigious Bristol Old Vic Theatre School from where he carved out a successful 10yr career in Stage, Television, Film and Radio.
His experience as an actor and an understanding of the power of behaviour and body language brought into working more and more with the business world He left acting behind in 2002 and set up his own consultancy and is currently working closely with numerous clients to support their leadership development process and create excellent communicators (all the way from shop floor to boardroom) in a wide variety of industries both in the UK and around the world.
His client list (past and present) includes Financial Services (Barclays, Bank of Ireland, M&G, Euronext), Technology (Akamai, Dell, Salesforce), Media (Emap, DigitasLBi), Legal (Linklaters, Clifford Chance), Health (NHS, Together First CIC), Logistics (Kuehne Nagel), Fashion & Retail (Arcadia Group), Pharmaceuticals (Novartis, Astra Zeneca), Telecoms (O2 & Vodafone), Construction (Galliford Try, Taylor Wimpey) to name but a few.
Simon has been designing, leading and facilitating high quality training programmes and developing new and dynamics products for clients including virtual and podcast content. He loves collaborating with others to find genuinely impactful and relevant ways to empower and enable others to raise awareness, achieve insight and stretch themselves to become the architects of their own development to making lasting change.
Clients say his warm, open and informal, yet pragmatic, style combined with his passion to engage and challenge people has helped him make him a fundamental part of adding value for individuals, groups and clients in everything he does. From a personal perspective, he enjoys the challenge of working on new projects and travelling to new places. He is passionate about sport (particularly cricket) and is ‘blessed’ with an infuriatingly inconsistent golf game. Above all, Simon prides himself as being facilitator and coach whose focus is always committed to supporting and engaging with others to bring out their best, helping their continual personal and professional development, whatever the challenge and whatever their role
Simon Westwood
Founder & Director
Karlyn Stephen
Director
Karlyn has been using her skills in the corporate environment for over 20 years and have gained a wealth of experience in coaching, facilitation and role-play (character & scenario based) as well as both scripted and improvised forum theatre for the training and developing of staff right up to Senior Management Level. Her work in adding key value to clients has involved many different themes and topics including Appraisals, Performance Management, Communication Skills, Customer Service Training, Assertiveness Training, Diversity Training, Handling Difficult People & Situations, Assessment & Feedback and Interviewing Skills.
She also has extensive experience in facilitating groups and giving verbal and written behavioural feedback including use of competency frameworks and video/DVD playback.
Karlyn's background is rooted in her extensive acting career, where she appeared at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, working regularly in Rep and touring Scotland and appearing in the long running TV drama ‘Taggart’, before moving to London and forging a successful career as a voiceover artist. She has provided the voice for high profile campaigns including Bank of Scotland, British Gas, Scottish Hydro Electric, Barclays, RBS, BT, M&S, Asda, Aldi, Vision Express, KLM Airways, and Scotrail amongst others. She has provided continuity and promo voices for the BBC, Disney, Sky and The Sci-Fi Channel as well as voicing many audiobooks and corporate videos.
Transferring her extensive list of skills and awareness to the business world, Karlyn has developed strong relationships over the years with the likes of Barclays, HSBC, Clifford Chance, SAP, BMW, Emap, BBC, Mars Masterfoods, Cancer Research UK, Arcadia, Eurostar, IPCC and London Transport. She has also been a key part of training the next generation of medical health professional through her work with the GMC, HCA, Bart’s Hospital, Guys Hospital, St. Georges Hospital and Imperial College, London.