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Meet the Directors

There are 5 Directors of Fields of Learning. Click on a photo or name below to find out more:

Our core values

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Jacqui Bio

Jacqui Fairbrass

I am a leadership coach, facilitator and trainer who helps leaders and their teams think differently.

I support leaders to develop skills to engage and align people around them to drive business performance.  
Background
As an education officer in the British Army for 18 years before becoming a coach, I worked with soldiers

and officers in a variety of leadership roles as well as working in multi-national operational environments

and high-profile staff officer roles in the Ministry of Defence. Outside work I bring my desire to empower

girls and young women to develop their confidence, adventurous spirit and full potential by volunteering with Girlguiding and am the District Commissioner for the guiding units in my community.
Style
I bring warmth, vitality and attentiveness to all my clients helping them develop the knowledge, capabilities and mindsets to embrace and sustain positive change.  My approach is supportive, challenging and intuitive. I help leaders create personal objectives and recognise the importance of authenticity, accountability and adaptability. I like to use creativity and the outdoors in my coaching and training to help create perspective, resilience and connection and I use approaches from NLP, behavioural psychology, neuroscience and a range of leadership tools. 
Qualifications

  • Master Executive Coach with the Association of Coaching 

  • Certified Systemic Team Coach with the Academy of Executive Coaching

  • NLP Practitioner

  • Certified Transactional Analysis 101 practitioner

  • Accredited MBTI Step I and Step II practitioner

  • Total Strengths Deployment Inventory (SDI) and SDI 2.0 (Core Strengths through Relationships) master practitioner and trainer to trainers. 

  • MBA (Defence Administration) and MA Defence Studies

  • Graduate of the Joint Services Command and Staff College

  • Bachelor of Education

  • Member of the Chartered Management Institute, the Association of Coaching and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council

My Experience
Leadership Development
I have designed, delivered and coached on a series of bespoke 9-month leadership development & coaching programmes for a NATO agency giving leaders personal awareness, interpersonal skills, tools, practice and confidence to sustain positive change in their leadership behaviours. I designed a cultural change programme for 120 leaders and ‘change champions’ within a global IT organisation to encourage commitment and engagement to business transformation. 
My roots in Army education have focused on leadership development throughout my career, whether designing and delivering training for leaders’ promotion programmes (including accreditation with CMI and ILM from QCF Levels 2 to 7 for the 3 branches of the Armed Forces), practical resilience and confidence development for leaders of all levels or mentor and coaching support for individuals.
Coaching
I have 1000+ coaching hours and coach leaders across various levels.  Leaders I have worked with:

  • want to become more effective leading high performing teams and organisations and be able to provide greater inspiration and motivation to their people

  • want to be able to manage poor performance

  • are dealing with pressure and complexity at work and are finding that this is having an impact on their wider life

  • wish to create the most effective start to the new role they have just stepped into

  • feel that they are ready to take the next step to advance their career

  • have always been successful but some reason now feel blocked

  • want to increase their presence and impact and raise their profile in the organisation

Outside the leadership world I also provide, return to work coaching, career change and career start coaching for individuals, graduates and school leavers. 
Team Development
I have coached a range of functional teams using a systemic team coaching approach that help teams explore issues through a series of lenses: self, team, organisation and the wider world.  Recent examples include:

  • A Financial Director with her two branch chiefs over a four-month period who were struggling with an issue of trust and differences in leadership styles.

  • A new HR director and his senior management team of 6 to unravel a confusion of roles, responsibilities, tasking mechanisms and interpersonal friction. 

I have run many team development and team building programmes to help teams to build trust, connection and values alignment, and to help teams to transition through wider cultural change initiatives.  Both independently and as part of wider development programmes, I have run dynamic and mentally and physically challenging outdoor coaching programmes with teams in forests and mountains including programmes in the Pyrenees.

John Bio

John Fairbrass

I spent more than 30 years in the Royal Navy and telecommunications industry.  

As Services Business Director for Nokia in the UK, I successfully delivered some of the biggest,

time critical, mobile telecommunication programmes in Western Europe.  I am a professional

Mountain Leader, a graduate of Senior Executive Leadership Programmes from London Business School

and London School of Economics and was on the staff at the UK Joint Services Command and Staff College.

I am also a qualified Executive Coach, a Systemic Team Coach and a Prince2 Practitioner.
Background
At heart, I am a Programme Manager who relishes delivering successful programmes, that not only exceed budget, quality and time requirements, but also ‘grow’ the individual and harnesses the ‘collective brilliance’ of the wider team. I am also an executive and board-level coach, focusing on individual and team development. I support leaders to develop their skills and their teams to drive transformation and enhance business performance. My particular area of interest is in building resilience; understanding how to maintain self and team performance in an often complex, ambiguous and matrix environment with unaligned objectives and confusing priorities.  I have a wealth of experience, and mentor leaders who operate in complex environments and need to ensure solid commercial profitability whilst maintaining positive stakeholder and board level engagement. 
Qualifications

  • Chartered Engineer

  • Bachelor of Engineering (Hons) 

  • PRINCE2 Practitioner

  • ILM Level 7 – Executive Coaching and Mentoring

  • Member of Association of Coaching

  • Certified Systemic Team Coach with the Academy of Executive Coaching

  • Total Strengths Deployment Inventory (SDI) Practitioner 

  • Professional Mountain Leader (ML)

My Experience
Programme Management
 A Prince2 qualified Project Manager, John has successfully managed some of the most complex and time critical programmes across Europe, including :- 

  • 18 month refit of a major warship – involving the coordination of over 1400 distinct work packages with critical time, infrastructure and resource dependencies

  • 2-year UK wide 3G Telecommunications swap out for two leading UK operators – meeting all budget, quality and time requirements. 

  • Delivery of 3 x 9-month Achieving Leadership Excellence programmes for NCIA – involving modules in The Hague, Brussels, Arnhem and the Pyrenees

Coaching    

I believe coaching to be the most effective style of leadership and have coached successfully throughout my 30-year career in business, the military and the mountains.  I create a trusting and honest relationship in which we can explore motivations, values and desired outcomes.  I have recently coached ;
•    a newly promoted Operations Director for a major telco who was looking to create impact from Day 1 and form a new team around him, 
•    a female NHS Director who was launching a Trust wide transformation programme and wanted to ensure she got the buy in and commitment from colleagues, board and staff.
Team Development
As a team coach, I first try to understand the underlying team dynamics, including interpersonal relationships, the level of trust and openness between the team members and the level of commitment to team success.  Even well integrated teams need to function cohesively, I use a systemic approach to analyse the level of team cohesion, their understanding of team and corporate objectives, the clarity of internal processes and the quality of internal and external communication.  Like finely tuned race engines, all teams need a regular service and maintenance – I put in place a mechanism for self-review, so that teams can regularly check on their own cohesion, functioning and effectiveness and make adjustments and improvements as necessary.

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Kim Bio
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Kim Foster

I am an experienced coach and trainer with an extensive background running management

and leadership programmes. I work with leadership teams within organisations to develop

their mindset and capability, before working to develop the culture across the organisation.

I am passionate about new and innovative ways of working, always pushing for results and ROI. 

Background
I started out in retail working my way up through the “HR” ranks, specialising in talent, development and engagement. In 2016 I transitioned across in to consulting where most recently I was People and Change Director. Having worked across many organisations in a number of sectors, and with a vast range of leaders with different goals, behaviours and ways of working, I believe that people and their engagement is fundamental to the success of any organisation. 
Style
I am told I have a warm and approachable style, bringing energy, experience and commitment to any projects I undertake. I pride myself on high quality, thought provoking and credible delivery, creating an environment where challenge and support are equally balanced. As someone who works and interacts with a variety of people, I know the importance of communication, collaboration and engagement in the workplace and I enable others to be their best and recognise the power of a people focused culture. 
Qualifications

  • Post graduate certificate in Business & Personal coaching 

  • ICF associate coach

  • Voiceprint accredited practitioner

  • Member of National Council of Psychotherapists

  • Postgraduate diploma in HR Management 

  • Member of Chartered institute of personnel and development 

My Experience

Leadership Development
Throughout my career I have designed and delivered many leadership and management development programmes. Most recent examples include:- 

  • Worked in partnership with the talent team at CA technology to roll out a development programme to their high potential EMEA sales leaders. This was 6 training modules delivered over 10 months supported by team and individual coaching, online content and networking groups and received exceptional feedback. 

  • Ran a year long programme for the UK&I SAS Executive team, including 4 development modules, team and 121 coaching. This then developed into further 2 day modules for the rest of the organization running on an ongoing basis covering topics such as resilience, high performance mindset and coaching. 

  • Delivered a management development programme for Avalon Media, running ongoing cycles throughout the year for their middle and senior managers. This was 4 modules covering management fundamentals. 

Coaching
I am an experienced coach who is passionate about behavioural change and achieving outcomes. I work with individuals to reach their full potential, helping them to look at challenges from a different angle, explore all opportunities and provoke fresh thinking and insight. Recent individuals I have worked with are: -

  • Head of Finance within the NHS, helping them to improve their management style and impact within the organisation.

  • CEO of a consulting organisation, working with them to manage their transition into the role and be the best they can be.

  • Vice president of a technology company to develop communication style, impact and influence.

Team Development
I have a passion for developing and delivering team days that really make a difference, scoping requirements through 121 interviews, designing the day and coaching the team throughout a facilitated workshop. Recent examples include: - 

  • Organisation Design focussed sessions at Glen Dimplex, helping them to strategically work through a new organisational structure. 

  • Work with the Lofbergs Management and Sales teams to enable better communications and ways of working. 

  • Facilitation and team coaching with the TUI Crystal Ski EMEA leadership team to help them improve team impact and collaboration.

Sue Bio
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Sue Macmillan

I am a narrative coach, facilitator and trainer who specialises in using neuroscience to help

leaders better understand themselves and others.  Enabling improved communication and

behavioural change to enhance their own performance and that of the teams they lead. 
Background
As a senior physiotherapist in the NHS for 20 years I developed my own communication skills

in terms of the numbers of different people I saw from a multitude of backgrounds and cultures. I experienced first-hand how connected the mind and body are in illness and this has informed my multidisciplinary approach to personal development. My strong belief in individual equality was given more intellectual rigour when I undertook a Human Rights Masters in 2005. As a product of that degree course I was involved for over 10 years with an arts charity in Bosnia, making numerous trips to work using music and drama with young people from Serb and Muslim communities in Republica Serbska where the tensions of the Bosnian conflict of the 1990’s are still strongly felt. This developed my interest in connecting science with the arts, moving towards more creative and holistic models for inclusion. Outside of work I trained as an actress and storyteller and hold an equity card for performance. Some of the elements of performance helped me gain the ability to step into another’s shoes, as well as work with individual leaders on confidence and impact. 
Style
I bring open connection, humour and attentive energy to all my clients, helping them develop their own self-awareness and motivation to embrace change in order to improve and develop their effectiveness as leaders.  My approach is to listen to their personal and career narratives with empathy; to help them develop objectives and outcomes and to empathetically challenge with questions that help clients gather new perspectives and the ability to adapt their styles in order to improve their performance. I seek to draw out today’s key leadership skills of authenticity, compassion and adaptability.
Qualifications

  • Master Executive Coach with the Association of Coaching 

  • Certified Narrative Therapist – level 2 

  • NLP Practitioner

  • Accredited Advanced VoicePrint Practitioner 

  • Masters in Understanding and Securing Human Rights, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, SAS London University 

  • Diploma in Acting at Hertfordshire Drama School – Actors Equity Association 

  • Qualified Physiotherapist MCSP SRP

My Experience
Leadership Development
I have designed and delivered a range of 6 month leadership programmes for Senior Management Teams in public sector organisations over the last 5 years. In 2019 I led a programme with the Islamic World Bank equivalent in Saudi Arabia supported by a 12 month coaching package for their high potential leaders which continues into this year. In the private sector last year I ran the ‘Infinitus’ programme to European high potential leaders for a large tech organization. I have a special interest in women’s leadership and have designed and delivered programmes in Europe and SE Asia for female leaders and most recently I was excited to work with the Met Police on a large new initiative to support young female leaders through their maternity experience. 

Coaching
I have over 350 coaching hours and coach leaders across various levels. Leaders I have worked with:

  • Want to bring their authentic self to the office - home and work 

  • Want to be able to talk about themselves and their families 

  • Are struggling with their self-belief 

  • Want to be able to manage more effectively in a VUCA world

  • Want to make a better impact on those around them and their organisation.

I regularly deliver an AC accredited 6-month Coaching Mastery Programme which works with leaders to develop their coaching skills and their leadership style. Delegates must write case studies, reflective learning logs and take part in supervision. The skills gained are invaluable in their lives and careers. 
Team Development
I have coached teams using a systemic team coaching approach – ensuring a robust diagnostic process from which key themes arise in order to work on the specific and targeted needs of the team. 
Recent examples include:

  • I am currently supporting a range of NHS teams in the Covid-19 crisis to build their resilience and wellbeing by running a series of 1:1 sessions and a weekly group meeting, all run remotely and responding to the most urgent needs of the time. This builds on work I have done with the NHS Mental Health team that worked with the survivors of the Grenfell tragedy, using narrative coaching to reflect on the learning they gained. From these experiences I now offer crisis management and burnout support to individuals and teams.

  • A CEO and his SMT who had significant issues of trust resulting in unhelpful team dynamics. We worked on the basics of what trust really looked like and from that how to challenge and hold team members to account in a safe way that encouraged commitment and a focus on results.

  • As part of wider leadership development programmes, I have supported the learning that can be achieved from mentally and physically challenging outdoor coaching programmes with NATO teams in the outdoors in the Pyrenees for the last 3 years.

James Bio

James Macmillan

I have over thirty years of business experience, the last ten of which have been spent working

directly as a coach. I was a senior portfolio manager with the largest global asset management

firm, leading teams and interacting daily with the top management teams of global listed businesses.

Background

Having retrained I now work at executive level on a 1:1 basis and enjoy bringing challenge and new

insights to a variety of clients. I have a particular fascination with language, as it can often reveal

hidden meaning below the surface structure. I am engaged at board level by two local charitable

organisations; Grand Union Housing Group where I am Group Chair and the MK Parks Trust, where I chair the commercial subsidiary. I also work as an associate for an emerging tech company that uses AI and Big Data to analyse and improve investors’ decision making processes.

Qualifications

  • Member of the Association for Coaching

  • Accredited Master Coach

  • Accredited MBTI Step I & II facilitator

  • Advanced VoicePrint Practitioner

  • NLP Practitioner

  • MA in Modern Languages (Trinity, Cambridge)

  • Member of the CFA Institute

My Experience

Coaching

I have 10 years coaching experience at executive and C-Suite level. The majority of my work has been 1:1 while I have done some group MBTI feedback sessions. My approach is pragmatic, combining the experience I gained as a portfolio manager with tried and tested coaching strategies using a variety of models. These are designed to place the emphasis squarely on the individual being coached, focusing on the outcomes to be achieved. I typically start my engagements with an MBTI Step II assessment or a VoicePrint questionnaire which we will refer back to regularly during the course of the coaching. Clients include a wide range of multinational and national corporations, charities and global consulting firms.

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Catherine Bio

Catherine Doherty

I founded Fields of Learning 20 years ago to bring the qualities that I experience during my coaching work

to a wider audience. After twenty years I have trained several hundred individuals whom are part of the 

Fields of Learning alumni network. My passion to unlock the capacity in others so that they fully achieve their

potential. I am taking more of a back seat role and will be providing the non-executive guidance role for FOL

going forward.

Background

My background is in Operational and Strategic Management; both in Australia and the UK. I have experienced both the excitement and challenges of providing a growing service within financial constraints. I co-authored the book “LEADERSHIP in the Teach Yourself series of books with John Thomson of Ulster University. As founder of Fields of Learning I have worked with top teams, partnership boards and senior executives helping organisations cope with restructures and major change programmes and coaching people through the challenges they face. We have run large scale leadership development programmes in a number of public sector organisations.

Qualifications

  • Member of the Association for Coaching

  • Accredited Master Coach

  • Accredited Coach Trainer

  • Ass Diploma of Applied Science in Management  - S.T.C. Now Edith Cowan University -Western Australia

  • NLP Master Practitioner

  • NLP Trainer Trainer

  • Accredited Coach Supervisor

My Experience

Coaching

I bring calm energy and flexible thinking that unlocks understanding and positive choices for those who work with me.

Leadership Development

I have a flair for working with groups and creating the necessary energy and creative thinking to address the issues that will make the difference in organisations. 

Catherine
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