Why SME leaders work with me

Being a senior leader in an SME comes with a constant mix of challenges, from high-level strategic choices down to the daily friction of leading teams, managing workload, and improving your personal effectiveness in the role. You don't need to be in the middle of a major crisis or pivot to benefit from dedicated coaching space. Most of my clients use our sessions as an ongoing sounding board to work through live operational dilemmas, untangle complex team dynamics, develop their leadership style and competencies, or simply process the personal pressure and trade-offs that come with the job.

Executive coaching can often miss the mark in high-growth businesses, either by being too non-directive and lacking in substance, or by enforcing rigid playbooks and generic psychometrics (for the record, I’m an INTJ...) that don’t fit the reality SME leaders face. As your development partner, I bridge that gap, combining practical leadership models and psychological depth with direct candour and accountability, informed by my own experiences in high-pressure roles. If you bring the openness and commitment, we’ll get you there together.

My practice integrates four distinct capabilities:

1. Real operational experience: I’m not a former consultant or management theorist. I spent 15 years in operational roles, later training and practicing as a leadership coach and therapist alongside the demands of life in startups to hone my craft of supporting and enabling leaders. As the former VP People at Depop, I sat on the executive team through Series A to C funding rounds, scaling from 40 to 500+ people, and navigating our $1.6bn acquisition by Etsy Inc. I’ve lived through rapid growth, painful organisational restructuring, M&A integration, and executive team dynamics from the inside.

2. Psychological rigour & insight: In addition to my executive coaching credentials (AoEC diploma accredited by the ICF and EMCC) and coaching experience, I am a trained counsellor (PgDip with BACP registration) and spent years supporting clients navigating deeply personal challenges and growth. I bring this deep psychological grounding to coaching sessions, moving beyond surface-level tactics to examine the underlying beliefs, inner patterns and leadership habits that can inhibit or unleash your capacity, growth and performance.

3. Investor & boardroom context: Through my work with Catalysis Advisory, I have led management due diligence and strategic organisational reviews for VC/PE investors, Chairs, and management teams across multiple industries and scales, as well as advising numerous CEOs, COOs and CPOs on organisational strategy. I understand the commercial expectations, delivery pressures and governance frameworks placed on SME leaders, and how expectations of executives shift as an organisation scales.

4. Practical facilitation & team alignment: Beyond 1:1 executive coaching, I design and facilitate executive offsites, alignment sessions, and practical leadership workshops that unblock issues, improve team culture, and create clarity and momentum. The time I spend with teams exploring their dynamics and challenges feeds into my expertise as an executive coach, and vice versa.