Ashridge
Gene Horan
Gene joined Ashridge in 1986. He is currently director of leadership programmes.
Gene graduated from Pace University, New York, in 1968 with a degree in communications and received his Masters degree from the University of Georgia in psychology and organisational development in 1979 and a Masters course in therapy and counselling from Antioch University in 1993. He has held a number of senior positions in North America and Europe, including Senior Training Specialist for Citibank, Group Manager - European Operations for Alexander Proudfoot Company; Training Director Gold Kist and Director of Training for Dunhill International.
Gene also has a wide variety of consulting experience with particular concentration on organisational psychology, mentoring and increasing the effectiveness of senior management levels. His special areas of interest are in Employee Assistance Programmes (EAP's), leadership development and organisational development. His consulting work has been in retail, food processing, defence, insurance and the financial service areas.
As director of leadership programmes at Ashridge, Gene is responsible for designing and running the Ashridge Leadership Process (ALP), which over 230 participants attend each year. He also designs and runs tailored version of the ALP for clients such as: Mott McDonald, TNO, Citibank, Schott Glas and Boots the Chemist. He is currently researching the leadership development needs of managers at the most senior levels and is writing a book entitled Finding your leadership voice, which details the Ashridge leadership model.
Gene is guest lecturer/visiting faculty in leadership at the following institutions:
- University of Otago, New Zealand
- Monash University, Australia
- University of Capetown, South Africa
- Pace University, USA
- Ministry of Defence Staff College, UK
- Royal College of Nursing, UK
Ann Almeida
Ann is employed by Ashridge as a Leadership Coach and uses her coaching skills on both open and tailored Leadership programmes. She also participates in skills training and is called upon to facilitate learning support groups and action learning sets. As well as her client facing responsibilities she helped to set up a quality process framework for a leadership coaching model and she is currently involved in the creation of the Ashridge Leadership Centre website.
Ann has been at the centre of organisational change for almost 20 years in the various management roles she has held in Information Technology. She played a major part in designing, developing and implementing Ashridge’s original computerised administrative systems. In 1996 she combined IT with HR development, relinquishing her IT involvement altogether early in1998 to concentrate on leadership coaching.
Ann has a combined degree in Psychology and Technology and a postgraduate diploma in Integrative Counselling grounded in Rogerian (person-centred) theories. As a coach she uses a variety of approaches including Appreciative Inquiry, NLP and Solution-Focused. She is a member of the British Psychological Society and also the British Association of Counselling & Psychotherapy whose Code of Ethics guide her practice. Meeting monthly with other trained professionals both informs her work and maintains her ethical boundaries.
Ann holds Level A and Level B qualifications with the British Psychological Society which qualifies her to administer and provide feedback on a number of psychometric instruments including MBTI Step I and Step II, CPI and Firo-B. She is also qualified to feedback 360o instruments such as MSP, Profilor, Benchmarks and Ashridge’s own AIMS. She views these instruments as useful tools for exploring many different aspects of personality, helping individuals to identify their strengths and development needs.
Client organisations with which Ann has worked include Yellow Pages, Deutsche Bank, BBC, London International Group, Lex Service PLC, Smith & Nephew Ltd, RHM Ltd, Enterprise Oil and Schott Glass.
Richard Bamsey
Richard is Head of Multimedia and has been at Ashridge for 15 years. He leads a team of graphic designers and media technicians. He has been involved in all the Leadership Conferences from the design of T-shirts to stage sets and looks forward to the creative challenge of the conference each year because it is unique.
Wendy Briner
For Wendy Briner this is the fourth Leadership Conference she is helping to organise as she enjoys the opportunity to bring new and interesting people together around leadership,what it is, where it is going and how we can develop leaders. This year, as before, she is discovering and capturing the stories of Ordinary Leaders Achieving Extraordinary Results (Opera), to add to our fund of unique but illustrative approaches to leadership. Besides the conference activities, Wendy is Director of Leadership Coaching, developing Ashridge's network of coaches and approach to coaching leaders. She is working on two research projects. One is the second phase of an appreciative inquiry of the Ashridge Leadership Process: What difference does it make? Leaders Tell Their Story, which is piloting and appreciative 360. The second is as part of the Top Leader Journey Team, where she is particularly interest in how, leaders are doing strategy in practise. Wendy has published "Project Leadership" and is a regular writer and contributor to conferences on leadership, coaching, and team performance.
David Cowley
David joined Ashridge 4 years ago as Client Director, working with clients from a wide range of business sectors including advertising, computer services, financial services, oil, pharmaceuticals and chemicals. His work covers areas such as strategic management, organisational cultures and change, personal development and leadership. His current interests include managerial thinking and creativity. From April 2002 David will be the Programme Director for the Ashridge Diploma in General Management.
David holds degrees in chemistry and polymer science from the Universities of Leicester and Manchester. After graduation he joined the speciality chemicals business of the Merck Group. During seven years with them he held positions in sales, marketing and general management and was responsible for the technical and commercial development of products used in the micro electronic, fibre optic and optical industries.
After completing his MBA at Cranfield in 1990 he joined the faculty there and tutored extensively on strategic management and organisational culture to practising managers and graduate students in the UK, Europe, the USA and the Far East. During this time David was programme director for Strategy and Strategic Management and the Foundation Management Programme, both open courses. He has also worked with managers on in-company general programmes for many organisations including NCR, British Aerospace, Leyland-Daf, Trygg Hansa, Brammer and Enterprise Oil.
David then spent two years in Uppsala, Sweden. He worked for the Institute for Personal and Organisational Development, IPF. During this time David worked extensively in the public sector with local and national governmental and administrative organisations and in the private sector with SAS and Telia. David returned to the UK in 1997 although he has maintained his Swedish connections and spends a significant amount of time working with Swedish organisations.
Tony Montes
Tony's expertise and interests are in developing business transformation strategies and processes, helping people and organisations through change and transition and addressing global leadership and culture issues. His work in the UK also involves leadership development of ethnic minority senior civil servants, under the Cabinet Office's Pathways scheme, consulting for the leadership team of Microsoft UK, and Microsoft globally on Diversity transformation, the Improvement and Development Agency for Local Government, and the Commission for Racial Equality.
Leon Olsen
Leon's main interests and areas of expertise include Corporate Governance and Responsibility and its integration into strategic corporate design. For example, through Corporate Reporting and Communication, especially non-financial business reporting such as intellectual capital, social and sustainability reporting.
" To succeed in the 21st century, companies must demonstrate, deliver and report aspirations and performance which is valuable to real people."
Eve Poole
Eve joined Ashridge in the Summer of 2002 to focus on Leadership and Change Management. Her clients include Atos KPMG Consulting, IDeA, the MOD, Ecolab and Rexam. She teaches on a variety of programmes, including Strategic HR Management, Influencing Strategies and Skills, Performance Through People and the Ashridge Leadership Process.
Eve joined Ashridge from Deloitte Consulting, where she carried out assignments involving organisational design, communications, recruitment, training and project management, for clients such as the MOD, the Student Loans Company, the Highways Agency, the BBC, the Post Office, the Prince’s Trust, Marconi, Midlands Electricity, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, CSFB, Hewlett Packard, Computacenter, BAA and World Duty Free. She was also responsible for Deloitte’s internal training on Change Management and Communications.
Prior to completing her Edinburgh MBA in 1998, where she won the Association of MBA’s Student of the Year award, she worked for the Church Commissioners, a quasi-governmental organisation responsible for managing the Church of England's £4.4 billion assets. One key role she had there was as part of the programme team designing and planning an unprecedented four-way merger between the Church’s national organisations – its treasury, parliaments, cabinet and pension fund.
Eve’s first degree was in Theology from the University of Durham, and she retains an interest in the interplay between Theology and Management, delivering a paper to the University of Surrey’s 2002 International Conference on Organisational Spirituality on ‘The Parables for Management’.
Eve is also an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh Management School and a Visiting Lecturer at Bath University Business School, teaching the MBA Management Consulting elective.
Toby Roe
Toby Roe is the PR Manager at Ashridge, responsible for all of the organisation's media relations. Prior to Ashridge, Toby had his own PR consultancy specialising in the professional and financial sectors. Before that, he worked for a number of larger international PR agencies. Previous clients have ranged from large corporates through to entrepreneurial start ups, including The Boston Consulting Group, Barclays, Celemi, iFormation Group and KPNQwest.
Sian Rogers
Sian joined Ashridge in 2002 as Alumni Development Manager. This new position is designed to develop and drive forward the Alumni strategy in close liaison with the Alumni Board. Sian's role involves strengthening the links between the alumni and Ashridge, building on the concept of Lifelong Growth and directing the activities of the alumni office to deliver more value direct to all members. Sian's role is expanding to include all aspects of loyalty building on individual and corporate client levels.
After graduating with a BSc(Hons) in Mathematics and Psychology, Sian embarked on a career in production, general management and business development within the media and new media industry, her most recent positions being Director of Operations and Head of Business Development at Chrysalis New Media. Prior to this Sian worked for Chrysalis Television Group, first as Production Manager, working mainly in the areas of entertainment and sport in the UK and the USA, and subsequently as Head of Production with responsibility for six television production companies.
The Campaign for Leadership
Ian Lawson
Ian Lawson is the CEO of The Work Foundation’s The Campaign for Leadership. Its purpose is to improve working life by promoting good leadership. He has worked at The Work Foundation since 1984 following some years in distribution in the automobile industry. He has held a number of Director roles at The Work Foundation including Quality, Consultancy Services and Operations.
Clients include organisations across the full range of the world of work including Ford Motor Company, Metropolitan Police Service, Samuel Lewis Housing, London Electricity and the Association of London Government.
He has written two books on appraisal and one on leadership. Ian has lectured at a number of institutions amongst them are Henley Management College, Manchester Business School, American Management Association, Moscow School of Political Studies.
Media interviews have included The Today Programme, BBC Business Breakfast, Business Lunch and Radio 5 Live.
He lives in Essex and is married with three children. He has a degree in history from London University and loves cricket, classical music and military history.
Jafar Akahvan-Moossavi
Jafar has been working with organisations and individuals on effective management, leadership and organisational development. Jafar started his career studying for a degree in Electronic Engineering in Nottingham, towards the end of which he set up a self help advice and advocacy group for overseas students in East Midlands. This journey helped him to discover at least two things. One was that, he did not wish to be an Electronic Engineer. The other was that he felt more fulfilled working with people and organisations. To achieve these goals he joined Greater London Citizens Advice Bureaux Service. He worked in a number of roles culminating in managing a number of advice agencies and managing training and development function for over 100 bureaux.
To make a greater difference in helping voluntary organisations to become more effective Jafar joined a major funder of voluntary action in London as their training and development consultant. This helped him to work with some 500 voluntary organisations of different sizes and capacity in developing and implementing effective policies and practices in people management and leadership. He helped to fund and develop a number of programmes working with the staff, management committee, board members and senior executives. He is committed to enabling voluntary sector organisations, as fundamental partners in a vibrant civil society to spend time and energy examining their leadership, governance and people development efforts. He is very much committed to cross-sectoral sharing of experience and learning. He has been able to act as a coach to a number of senior executives of voluntary sector, public and more recently private sector leaders.
He is committed to a truly inclusive society. He is currently on secondment to the Campaign for Leadership at The Work Foundation. One of his major roles is to examine “race and leadership” with a view to explore the specific needs of black and minority ethnic leaders in Britain and developing interventions in meeting these needs.
Jafar lives in north London with his partner and their children.
The Wizards Network
Mark Lewis
Mark is back managing the logistics and event management as he has in the first three years of the conference. Mark is director of The Wizards Network, a commercially managed network of freelance event industry professionals driving creative change in the fields of corporate events and activity-based learning.
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