Practical, forward focused support for people and organisations on the move

Our team of coaches

Beth Parsons

Before joining our team, Beth’s career spanned two decades including an extended period in the automotive industry followed by seven years within Further Education, where she progressed to become Group Director of HR and Organisation Development within a multi-strand provider.

A highly experienced coach and facilitator, Beth is skilled at assessing new situations quickly and impartially, and then moving swiftly into practical action and delivery. She particularly relishes bringing people together and then working alongside them as they get ‘stuck in’ to real workplace challenges.

In doing so, she is able to draw upon more than 20 years of practical experience in a wide variety of HR roles, spanning Business Operations, Organisation Design and Development, Employee Relations, Training, Change Management and Policy and Planning.

Amongst her formal qualifications, she is a chartered fellow of the CIPD and is fully certified to use the MBTI profiling tool.

Jay Williams

Jay has more than twenty years of specific experience and expertise in learning and development roles, specialising in learning strategy, leadership, talent development, coaching and change management. He enjoys bringing a pragmatic and solutions-focussed approach to his work, and has a passion for development work that achieves lasting change and impact for individuals and organisations alike.

He has designed and supported the delivery of several large-scale organisation development and culture change interventions, as well as overseeing the creation and implementation of training portfolios in both technical and professional development arenas.

He has extensive experience of partnership working, having played a key role in a collaborative venture between a previous employer and a blue-chip UK university, being invited to be a key-note speaker on the subject at the 2016 CIPD Conference.

Amongst his array of diverse qualifications, Jay holds Qualified Teacher Status as well as being ISEB (Information Systems Examination Board) qualified in Project Management.

Maggie Smith

Before becoming a full time coach, Maggie worked for many years in management positions in the events and hotel industries.

She specialised in project management and leading diverse teams, working with blue chip organisations in delivering their visions. She was also a certified trainer for Thistle Hotels and designed and delivered interventions around customer care, social skills and induction programmes.

She later became Head of Events at The Work Foundation. In this role she was the lead on their high profile party conference fringe programmes, organising events for speakers including Tony Blair whilst Prime Minister, Greg Dyke, former Director General of the BBC and Sir Terry Leahy, CEO of Tesco plc.

As well as her individual coaching clients, Maggie works as a coach and facilitator on a number of leadership programmes. In her spare time she is studying Psychology with the Open University.

Allison Taylor

Allison has worked for over twenty years in the private, public and third sector, including a number of senior management positions, delivering results and demonstrating real returns on investment with innovative practice and award winning methods.

Before becoming a full time coach, her most recent positions were in HR and Organisation development, and she has particular expertise in people development, HR strategy and Business Planning.

In addition to her formal coaching accreditation, she is qualified as a workplace mediator and is also licensed to use the Myers Briggs Type Indicator tool.

Allison is a professional mentor at Aston Business School. She has held an officers commission in the RAF VRT, and has been on the Independent Monitoring Board of a prison. She is a Board member of a Housing Association and in her spare time she’s building a 90% scale Supermarine Spitfire!

Chris Sheepshanks

Chris brings an unusual variety of disciplines and experience to his work. His background was initially in the British Army, where he served as an officer with the Royal Green Jackets in a series of locations in peacetime and operational roles.

He left the Army in the mid 1990s and after completing an MBA at London Business School, he worked for 5 years in new venture development and in a number of executive and senior management positions with Associated Newspapers and then Associated New Media.

He has now worked as an executive and team coach for the last 10 years and this experience, coupled with his work as a senior consultant in developing robust and sustainable leadership and organisation development strategies, enables him to be a pragmatic, effective and challenging source of support for his clients at an individual and at an organisational level.

He has a particular interest in teams and the development of leadership capability, with an emphasis on the attitude, beliefs, behaviours, and disciplines that need to be in place to generate high and sustained performance within a working environment..

Mary Keating

Mary worked in the Social Care sector for over forty years as a social worker, counsellor, manager, academic and more recently in the development of national policy. She is an experienced facilitator and coach, with extensive knowledge of action learning methodologies.

In this capacity she has worked with both senior and middle managers in social work and social care environments, as well as with other professionals in allied fields.

She is particularly interested in supporting those with aspirations to move into more senior roles, and helping them to do so in ways that maintain and uphold the values of the social work profession.

Mary lives in Birmingham, she is a registered social worker, has a MA from Middlesex University in Public Leadership and an ILM certificate in action learning facilitation.

Cheryl Wall

Before joining the Advance team, Cheryl worked in the social care sector for over thirty years as a social worker, programme and project manager, educator and workforce development manager. She has extensive experience of group facilitation, individual coaching and action learning.

Her diverse experience of strategic-level work includes a number of years within a government taskforce promoting work-based learning, and more recently at Skills for Care working on the development and implementation of national policy regarding the social care workforce.

Cheryl’s career has involved working with senior and middle managers in public and voluntary social care and health organisations and universities across the country. She is particularly committed to action learning as a means of individual and collective learning for service improvement and has an ILM certification in action learning facilitation.

She is a registered social worker, has an Advanced Award in Social Work Education and Training from the University of Warwick and a Post Graduate Certificate in Strategic Workforce Planning from Thames Valley University/NHS Projects.

David Rosenbauer

David started his career as a lawyer in Germany before making a radical career change, co-producing the South African musical “Kat and the Kings” on Broadway in 1999.

This was followed by a marketing role in international feature film sales and distribution with the European media network RTL-Group. He also spent time working as an actor in theatre, film and radio.

In 2003, he began applying all of that accumulated knowledge and experience in a developmental context and now has 15 years’ experience in training design and facilitation, as well as coaching individuals on their personal impact and communication skills.

Based in London he has also lived and worked in Germany, France, Belgium, Brazil and the U.S.A. He is a native speaker of English and German and fluent in French.


If that helps you to get more of a feel for our team of coaches, and you think we could work together, then please get in touch.