Suzy Edwards

Reading about the destruction of the Amazon as a 15year old propelled Suzy into a career as an environmental professional .

She spent 9 years with the Building Research Establishment, the UK's foremost organisation for construction related research and consultancy and a world leader in sustainable construction, where she become an internationally known expert in life cycle assessment of the environmental impact of building products and worked with manufacturers and trade associations, on large government research contracts, with UNEP and in international standards development.

As a freelance consultant, she co-created and delivered a 'Living Well Within One World' seminar series and was a consultant to a range of businesses and charities including the Good Homes Alliance.

Suzy believes passionately in 'walking her talk' and spends much of her time personally engaged with voluntary environmental action. She organized the West Hampstead Local Food Festival, was a founding member of the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s, co-ordinator of Camden Friends of the Earth and co-hosted a series of Conversation Cafes on the subject of Climate Change and personal liberty. She led the creation of Camden Climate Action Network and until 2008, was an Introduction Leader and coach for Landmark Education, a global personal transformation organisation.

She was until recently a board member of Friends of the Earth and is currently a Director of the Sustainable Development Foundation.

An encounter with a stranger, an old lady named Hope, set Suzy off on an adventure to bring a much higher awareness of consciousness to her activity and this challenge continues to inspire her. Integrating all of ourselves into what we do has become the theme of her mission. Through her work at Embercombe, she aims to inspire people to take on that challenge for themselves, so that our business lives, or indeed any of our 'public faces', can be as much an expression of our hearts desire as when we are just being 'us'.

Kanada Elizabeth Gorla

With 12 years experience directing opera and theatre, and a background in the visual arts and philosophy, Kanada brings a rare combination of gifts and skills to the work of people and organisation development. Kanada has been working as a consultant, facilitator and executive coach since 1995, developing teams and individuals across many sectors, cultures and countries. A long-time associate and Senior Consultant with Embercombe, her areas of expertise are authentic leadership, presence, personal impact, emotional literacy and transformational change.  

As a catalyst for transformation within individuals and among systems – in realising potential, unleashing creativity and facilitating deep and lasting change – she is among the best.
Her clients have ranged from multinationals (Shell Oil) to high street retailers (Harvey Nichols), from reinsurers (Hardy Group) to social entrepreneurs (Afrikids), from university students (Catalyst) to seasoned leaders (Unilever).

Kanada’s approach – holistic, intuitive and pragmatic – is grounded in her understanding of the transformational power of presence; the recognition that we are not only physical and mental beings but also emotional and spiritual ones; and her appreciation that at the heart of all change we find personal responsibility, awareness and choice.

Kanada is passionate about enabling people to realise all that they are and can be. At the same time she invites her clients to place their personal and organizational aspirations within the global social and environmental context in which we live, to reflect deeply on what matters to them, and to allow these deepest values to inform their personal actions and drive their business activities.

Jolyon Hammond

Jolyon has a background in corporate social responsibility, stress management & community organisations. With qualifications in Transactional Analysis, Integrative Psychotherapy & Executive Coaching, Jolyon is a gifted communicator who specialises in assisting his clients to confront and resolve the attitudes or behaviours that inhibit their spontaneity, presence, & performance. He actively chooses to spend a proportion of his time working in the public & voluntary sector. Most recently this has led him to coaching work inside HM prisons.

Jolyon is passionate about Whole Systems Change & believes that balancing the 'triple bottom line' (people, profit, planet) is the most efficient and effective way of building and maintaining high performance organisations that will model a pathway to the future.

When he gets the opportunity, he loves sailing, canoeing, walking in mountainous country or sitting beside an open fire.

Jolyon's clients include;
Hewlett Packard
Microsoft
Deutsche Bank
Lend Lease
HM Prisons

Tim 'Mac' Macartney

Mac has been working as a people and organisation development professional since 1984 before which he enjoyed an eclectic and spontaneous career path that included drama and theatre skills, restaurants, mine rescue, horticulture, and various social enterprises. He is the founder of Embercombe and leads Embercombe’s work with organisations. He is a published author, an inspirational speaker, a trustee with one other charity, and an associate with Leaders’ Quest. Alongside his own UK company, Mac also co-founded a leadership development consultancy in Poland www.pathways.com.pl.  This dynamic, entrepreneurial company develops the leaders of many large corporations such as Siemens, Mantracks, BZWBK, IBM, Aon Hewitt , while also engaging them with some of Poland’s most vulnerable communities and supporting their causes. Mac’s work with organisation leaders is motivated by his belief that

• this is one of the arenas in which we most need to see radical and transformative change
• we need to move towards a future in which all commercial organisations consider their primary purpose to be focused towards the creation of a just and truly sustainable world
• all trade will eventually become ‘fair trade’
• corporate social responsibility will become integrated and inseparable from the business mission of every commercial entity, and
• we will reverse the long-standing tradition of rewarding performance even when this same performance has hurt and weakened the individual, others, or the health and well-being of our natural environment.

Over a period of twenty years Mac has been mentored and coached by Native American metis ‘Medicine’ people to learn the cultural and spiritual teachings that once informed the practice of his own British indigenous culture. The values, principles, and wisdom of this tradition inform and guide all aspects of his work. Mac’s recent book ‘Finding Earth, Finding Soul – the invisible path to authentic leadership’ speaks to the necessity for each of us to gather our courage, step out of the shadows, and become ‘the leaders we have been waiting for’.

Danielle Marchant

Danielle has been an operational business leader for nearly twenty years and has worked as a coach, consultant and facilitator since 2006. During this time Danielle has designed and delivered large scale transformational change programmes in GMNC’s across multiple sectors, including FMCG, retail, finance, logistics, hospitality and IT. As a board level executive coach Danielle has worked with leaders in twenty different countries.  Additionally she has trained, developed and supervised nearly one hundred coaches globally.

Danielle has recently returned to the UK after three years living and working in Asia.  During this time she established the Asian arm of two UK businesses. This deep immersion has given Danielle fascinating insight, and she now seamlessly blends the skills and expertise she has developed in the West, with her understanding of life in the East.  In Asia Danielle was the Director of a successful international coaching company, which since its beginnings in 2005 has coached nearly ten thousand people in one hundred and fifty five companies worldwide. Simultaneously she established the Asian arm of an award-winning change management consultancy that specialises in helping companies achieve and sustain change through their people.

Danielle’s style is warm and engaging, she builds trust easily and holds groups with a gentle ease.  Her operational experience blended with a natural understanding of what makes people who they are, allows Danielle to quickly build rapport and work at both a strategic and emotional level.

Danielle creates safe environments for individuals and teams, allowing them build relationships and connect more deeply with one another. Vulnerability builds trust and trust drives peak performance. Danielle coaches teams beyond the boundaries of their comfort zone, sensitively supporting them to be daring. She facilitates leaders and teams to challenge and stretch themselves whilst connecting to themselves more deeply.  She helps teams and leaders gain clarity of purpose and vision, and supports them to follow the steps needed to get there.

Danielle’s mission is to help people do business with heart.  She strongly believes that leaders who connect to their heart are more able to lead businesses in a sustainable way, for both their people and the planet.  When she is not coaching Danielle spends her free time learning what it takes to live sustainably, as she and her partner bring to life a smallholding in the Cornish countryside.

Johannes Moeller

Johannes has a background in Psychology, and has worked with people and organisations in diverse ways since he was a teenager. In recent years, he has married this experience with his passion for sustainability, social justice and an entrepreneurial enthusiasm to instigate change initiatives.

His work is motivated by the belief that each individual and organisation has the choice to contribute to a more just, resilient and sustainable future in a unique and powerful way, and that the cumulative effect of these diverse actions creates the potential for large-scale social change.

Johannes focuses on creating and facilitating spaces for transformation, learning and service in the context of current social, environmental and economic challenges. He is an Associate of Embercombe, founded the Catalyst Course and the Embercombe Apprenticeship, and developed a number of Embercombe courses - including Crossroads for MBA students from Said Business School (Oxford University) and Sirius, an Environmental Leadership course for teenagers on behalf of the Wilderness Foundation.

His work is process-orientated, holistic and systemic, and mostly involves being in the outdoors. Johannes works with diverse clients, including teenagers, young adults, social entrepreneurs, NGOs and leaders from the corporate sector. Current clients include Future Foundations, The Centre for Leadership Studies at Exeter University, Lucca Leadership and the Wilderness Foundation.

Other interests include the performing arts, woodwork, social sculpture and hiking the beautiful hills and coasts of Great Britain.

Dorota Ostoja Zawadska

Dorota is a graduate of the Psychology Department and The School of Management and Business at Jagiellonian University, Krackow.

She is one of the two founders of Pathways Poland, the current CEO and one of the leading organisation development consultants in Poland.

Dorota has actively contributed towards Embercombe since the early days when our social enterprise was still in the visioning stage. She has participated in many leadership and culture change programmes in the UK, Poland and across Europe.

Dorota is in the process of launching a new social enterprise based aboard a fifty metre Dutch Barge moored on the Wiswa River in Krackow. This enterprise is the Polish equivalent to Embercombe and reflects the vision, inspiration and action that has marked Embercombe’s journey to date.

Dorota's clients include:
Coca-Cola
BP Poland
Bank Zachodni WBK
Unilever Poland
Danone
Telekomunikacja Polska S.A
Motorola
Siemens
Aventis Pharma
PKN Orlen
Sanofi Synthelabo
Whirlpool

Jonathan Snell

Jonathan combines highly developed perceptive skills with a profound understanding of human development, and the adventurous spirit of the artist journeyman. Almost all of his work concerns the accompaniment of people who seek to resolve difficulty or deepen understanding, towards realising the capacity to live a powerful and joyful life.

During the weekend when this short paragraph was written Jonathan has worked with a span of people unusual for most in his profession – top industry executives, business entrepreneurs, teenagers, artists, and others less easily defined. He also coaches and mentors many of Embercombe’s own people, and travels to Poland regularly to support our Polish sister organisation, Pathways Poland.

Jonathan’s professional expertise is developed and informed from many diverse sources including various schools of psychology, psychotherapy, the Alexander Technique, and the wisdom schools of different philosophical traditions. He is an accomplished artist, and ceramicist, has many smallholding skills, and as with all of Embercombe’s team, loves the companionship of good friends, stimulating new acquaintances, and true wilderness.

Nigel Topping

Nigel believes passionately in the possibility of business acting as a force for good in the world and that many business leaders yearn to see themselves as restoring rather than destroying the planet. Nigel is also a mathematician, an (ex) rugby player and an adventurer.

As a mathematician he brings insight from the world of chaos and complexity theory.

As a rugby player, having won two Blues for Cambridge University, he understands what it takes to form a great team and what it feels like to know that colleagues will literally put their heads on the line for each other.

As an adventurer, he has a deep love of wild places , having been on scientific and ski-mountaineering expeditions to Greenland, Iceland and Patagonia, and led mountain-bike trips across the volcanic deserts and icecaps of Iceland.

The intense experiences of being avalanched off a peak in Greenland two weeks away from the nearest settlement, making first ascents in Patagonia and being stuck in blizzards with no food have magnified his love of life and taught him much about how individuals respond in extreme stress.

Professionally, Nigel spent nearly twenty years in the world of manufacturing as consultant, plant manager and member of the MBO team which led the buy-out and acquisition activities to create a successful global component manufacturer in the automotive sector. His hands-on experience in senior operations and supply chain roles includes opening and closing factories, dealing with union-led businesses, strikes, fires, redundancies and refinancing. He has extensive international experience, having lived and worked in Spain, USA and Germany for extended periods and led major investment projects in Brazil and China.

Nigel is now working wherever his experience can support the tectonic shifts now taking place in the business world. He is leading the establishment of new global programmes at the Carbon Disclosure Project, a leading climate-change NGO working with many leading blue chip companies to help them engage with their supply chain. In his spare time he is shaping the business and economics elements of the Transition Towns movement by driving projects such as The Atmos Project, an initiative to bring a large area of industrial land into community ownership to create a lowcarbon business park, and the Totnes Pound, a local currency initiative.