Accredited Practitioners
Tailored support from specialist professional practitioners is available to help individuals and organizations to identify and embed high impact actions. These specialist practitioners can debrief the Competitive Advantage Accelerator and / or work with people on an ongoing basis to support their development. View the profiles of available accredited practitioners.
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Dr. Veronica Azua
Veronica is an executive coach and organisational psychologist who began her career as a psychoanalytical psychotherapist in Argentina, where she was born and raised. Her leadership development and coaching career started more than a decade ago at the London Business School working with EMBAs and MBAs in London and Dubai.
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She has worked for KPMG leading the design and delivery of leadership programmes for Partners and Directors for more than 6 years. She has also been coaching Partner and Directors in transition and maternity/paternity leavers, when returning to work.
Previously, Veronica worked in the Human Capital team at Deloitte, and was a global talent manager for Burberry delivering leadership development in Europe and Asia.
Her passion for psychology led Veronica to study a doctorate, researching the impact of self-criticism on leaders at a point of transition, which she finds is often a common theme in her work with senior leaders. She has contributed to a book published in 2019 on authentic confidence, where she discusses the origins and consequences of self-doubts and the Impostor Phenomenon in the workplace. Veronica has presented her research findings several times in the past years, speaking to audiences of up to 300 people, in-person and virtually.
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Catherine Law
Alongside ten years practicing as an executive coach, Catherine has over 20 years of front-line professional experience spanning both consulting and industry. A seasoned international professional, she worked for extended periods in New York, London and Zurich before relocating to Singapore in 2018.
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Through her management consulting career, Catherine advised some of the world’s leading banks on planning and executing aggressive growth strategies, addressing regulatory scrutiny and improving customer experience.
Earlier in her career, Catherine served in Citigroup’s proprietary M&A and strategy team, where she shepherded multi-billion-dollar transactions from target identification through post-merger integration, and she spearheaded innovative new market entries. Catherine enjoys helping senior executives achieve high levels of performance during periods of transition. She has brought together her business and coaching skills to design change programmes to drive organisational transformations in MNCs, and she has launched and delivered coaching offerings for professional services firms in Europe and Asia. She holds an MBA in International Management from Columbia University and a BA in International Studies from Vassar College.
Catherine is a Professional Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation and an accredited Coach Practitioner with the European Mentoring & Coaching Council. Catherine is active in professional circles as a speaker and author, sharing her insights on coaching, mindfulness in the workplace, and female leadership.
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Claire Lea
Claire works with leaders and high potentials in professional service firms and corporates. A former corporate lawyer and general counsel, she understands the challenge of transitioning professional and technical expertise into excellent leadership.
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Through her management consulting career, Catherine advised some of the world’s leading banks on planning and executing aggressive growth strategies, addressing regulatory scrutiny and improving customer experience.
Earlier in her career, Catherine served in Citigroup’s proprietary M&A and strategy team, where she shepherded multi-billion-dollar transactions from target identification through post-merger integration, and she spearheaded innovative new market entries. Catherine enjoys helping senior executives achieve high levels of performance during periods of transition.
She has brought together her business and coaching skills to design change programmes to drive organisational transformations in MNCs, and she has launched and delivered coaching offerings for professional services firms in Europe and Asia. She holds an MBA in International Management from Columbia University and a BA in International Studies from Vassar College.
Catherine is a Professional Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation and an accredited Coach Practitioner with the European Mentoring & Coaching Council. Catherine is active in professional circles as a speaker and author, sharing her insights on coaching, mindfulness in the workplace, and female leadership.
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Špela Trefalt
Špela is an experienced coach working with professionals who want to combine extraordinary career success with meaningful lives outside of work.
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Over her 10+ years of coaching, Špela has honed a focused approach to coaching that helps her clients achieve tangible improvements in very short periods of time.
A mom with a law degree, Špela is an MBA and holds a doctorate in business from Harvard Business School. Her professional background includes higher education, human resources management, HR consulting, and anchoring TV shows.
Over the past 15+ years in academia, she has been researching how attorneys and consultants in prominent professional service firms balance work and life. She is a professor of management at Simmons University in Boston. Špela helps clients craft personalized approaches that work for them in their specific circumstances. Her coaching experience and her extensive research background enable Špela to point out possibilities that individuals may not recognise exist, and to share evidence-based strategies for setting boundaries, accomplishing goals, and feeling good about one’s choices. Špela’s clients appreciate her unwavering support of their ambitions, her deep understanding of human psychology, her focused and analytical mind, and her sense of humour.
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Ian Paterson
Ian spent thirty years in Professional Services, including ten as a partner at EY, Andersen and Grant Thornton.
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During this time, he advised clients across a variety of sectors on M&A and fund-raising. At EY Ian led the internal coaching team and set up the coaching centre.
Twelve years ago, Ian founded Cote Consultants to allow him to follow his passion for helping individuals grow and maximise their performance. At Cote Ian has worked with a range of leaders and teams. As an experienced coach working with a range of leaders and teams, Ian understands the unique challenges that leaders face in their demanding work environment.
His coaching services are designed to help leaders excel in their careers by developing key skills such as time management, communication, leadership, and work-life balance. Whether you are a young leader just starting out, or an experienced veteran looking to take your career to the next level, Ian's coaching services can help you achieve your goals. With personalised one-on-one coaching sessions, he will work with you to identify your strengths and weaknesses, set achievable goals, and develop strategies for success.
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David Sheldon
David is an executive coach and accomplished facilitator. For thirteen years until April 2022, David was the General Counsel Europe of Credit Agricole Corporate & Investment Bank and was a member of the Banks' Global Management Committee. He managed a team of more than 120 lawyers in over 10 countries.
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David is a long-term advocate for Diversity & Inclusion having experienced first-hand the ongoing progress in this area particularly from the LGBTQ perspective.
David spent more than 30 years as an international lawyer in which time he has lived and worked in New York, Hong Kong, London, and Australia. Most of his legal experience has involved international transactions and/or legal issues. Prior to joining Credit Agricole, after a brief spell at Lehman Brothers, David worked in private practice including at Slaughter and May, Ashurst and as an equity Partner at Fried Frank which included opening the Firm’s offices in Hong Kong and Shanghai. In Australia David was a Senior Associate at Clayton Utz and was seconded to Macquarie Bank.
David completed the Meyler Campbell Mastered Executive Coaching Programme in 2018. He has ongoing supervision from a Meyler Campbell faculty member and supervision at the University of Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership.
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Jenny Jones
Jenny Jones FCA is a COO and consultant who works with global and regional professional services firms across the UK and Europe, building competitive advantage through strategy, profitability and partnership development.
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With over two decades of practical experience working inside professional services firms alongside partners, including seven years at Linklaters, she has led mergers and integrations, international office set-ups, and pricing and operational change, with a strong focus on developing partners and future leaders through mentoring and coaching. A Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and an accredited partner for the Harvard Law School Smart Collaboration Accelerator, Jenny is a strong advocate for the Competitive Advantage Accelerator and works with firms on how it can strengthen their strategy, collaboration and growth. She works between Leeds and London.ption goes here
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William Johnson
William is MD and Founder of The Openside Group. He has been advising professional services firms on aligning behaviours with strategy for over 30 years.
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William’s interest in learning theories and applications began when he was commissioned in the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy, where after front line service he became involved in aircrew training.
On leaving the Royal Navy he went up to Oxford, returning with a new daughter, a Squash Blue and a Masters in Experimental Psychology. He trained as an organisational psychologist and completed an MBA before joining a boutique strategy firm specialising in aligning strategy, structure and behaviours.
In 1990 William began training consultants in IBM in basic consultancy skills and behaviours, and his Openside Clients now include some of the world’s leading consulting and professional services firms, and global organisations (including telecoms, FMCG, technology and pharmaceutical companies) looking to adopt the best practices and behaviours from the world of professional services.
William is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, with an MA in Psychology from The Queen’s College Oxford, an MBA from Warwick Business School, and is a graduate of Harvard’s ‘Leading Professional Service Firms’ programme.