Sarah MacDonald

Founder

Sarah is a business leader who spent 25 years leading change for some of the world’s top brands. With a degree in sport management and psychology, she was instrumental in the growth and development of the Nike women’s retail business in the UK and Europe and went on to work as a senior leader for GlaxoSmithKline and the world’s leading Investment bank, Goldman Sachs.

Sarah is an expert in building experiences and believes they help us create emotional episodes which shape our attitudes, behaviours and performance.

She is an entrepreneur, mum of four, Founder of The Leadership High, MacExperience (MacX) and Inclusion-X.

Lara Milward

Managing Partner

Lara is an award-winning fitness and leadership coach, athlete, mentor, author, and mother. She is Managing Partner of The Leadership High and BlitzFitness.

She has learned that the physical and psychological are intrinsically linked – ‘I move therefore I think’. She is passionate about energising and enabling others.

A political science graduate who started her career at the House of Commons on a backbench committee for women’s healthcare, she has been a #womanswarrior ever since. Lara moved from Octagon to start Redmandarin after cutting her teeth in consultancy at The Henley Centre.

She is currently the Official Fitness Partner of the Virgin Strive Challenge and the Sunday Times Fitness Expert. She is crazy about CrossFit, singing and skiing.

Sally Storey

Transformation Partner

Sally has over 20 years’ leadership experience across all aspects of commercial pharmaceuticals and previously five years in FMCG. She was the first female leader of any pharmaceutical company across the Gulf Co-operation Council. She has a track record of delivering transformational change programmes across different functions and geographies.

With 13 years’ experience operating at board level, she is currently an advisory Board member for a leading strategy consultancy. Sally was also Chief Operating Officer at Surfers Against Sewage, a national marine conservation charity. 

Peter Redhead

Transformation Partner

Peter’s career path started with the Home Office looking at crime patterns. But he soon joined Northumbria Police where he ended up as a detective covering all major crimes.

An MBA with distinction led him to Hong Kong to become an equity analyst. Peter was Head of Asian Research for JPMorgan and Head of European Research for them in The City, and has managed staff from tens of countries and worked with clients and regulators world-wide. He was Global Head of Equity research and co-head of Asian equities at Macquarie.

Peter is a non-executive board director, a Leadership Coach and is active in a number of charities. We’re excited to have Peter as a member of the TLH team.

Emma Murphy

Transformation Partner

Emma has twenty five years’ experience working for some of the world’s most admired organisations. Emma spent 19 of those years as a team member and leader at the Bank of England where she developed and implemented the first strategic plans in the Bank of England’s 325-year history. These focused on how best to manage deeply analytical talent while building a more diverse workforce, transforming rigid ways of working, and bringing internal and external communications into the 21st century. Emma also played central roles in the integration of the Prudential Regulation Authority into the Bank and establishment of the Financial Policy Committee. She has supported and coached many leaders at senior levels on the formation and communication of their key messages which included Mark Carney, ex-Governor of the Bank of England.

Emma has advised other central banks around the world, helping adapt lessons learned from the Bank of England’s experience into their differing contexts. She has particular expertise in meshing cultural change with the people and communications challenges. Leading people and teams for a large part of her career Emma remains passionate about developing and supporting people in all aspects of their work and life. She has a first class BA in Economics, and a Masters in Economics from the London School of Economics. TLH are delighted to have Emma on their team.

Kirsty Pank

Associate Partner

Kirsty is a Project Director with over 20 years of strategic and operational experience in experiential marketing. As a creative problem solver, Kirsty always aspires to find the best ways to do things.

With a degree in Sports Science and marketing, Kirsty has worked for some outstanding organisations and teams. A career highlight was her role in the Rugby World Cup 2015 team.

Kirsty is our TLH Project Director and directs and manages our day-to-day operations.

Sally Murrell

Team Assistant

Sally has been on our team since the beginning. She brings many skills coupled with a sense of humour that simply keeps us all ticking and grounded as the business grows. She loves to work alongside us and our clients and ensures we are prepared, diaries are managed and our business continues to operate effectively and efficiently.

Sally loves to sing and play the piano and, because she is now a resident of Spain, work on improving her Spanish.

Quentin Naylor MBE

Quentin Naylor served in the UK military for 19 years and left as a Lieutenant Colonel. He served globally in the Gurkhas and on multiple operational tours. He was awarded an MBE for the leadership of a Gurkha company in Bosnia in 2004 and was Mentioned in Despatches for gallantry in command of a company of The Rifles in Al Basrah Iraq.

After leaving the Army he spent 5 years as a Vice President at Goldman Sachs running a global derivatives operations team across UK, India, Singapore and the US and latterly working in the Human Capital Management team working on employee projects and talent development initiatives. He has been with the eCommerce and technology giant, The Hut Group, since 2016, initially setting up their Learning and Development offering, THG Academy. He now works as Managing Director of Language Connect, a language services business which was acquired by THG in 2018.

Quentin has an MBA from Cranfield University and an MA in Defence Studies from King’s College, London. He is a Trustee of the 7th Gurkhas Regimental Association.

We are delighted that Quentin is joining the TLH Advisory Team.

Ade Adepitan MBE

Ade Adepitan MBE is television presenter, travel journalist, an award-winning wheelchair basketball Paralympian and children’s author.

He is a regular reporter for the BBC’s Travel Show and Channel 4’s Unreported World and has hosted numerous large-scale sporting events over the years, including the BAFTA award-winning 2012 Paralympics coverage alongside Clare Balding and the 2016 Invictus Games. He’s also presented the Children in Need Live appeal show for the last four years.

Ade has released three children’s books under the Cyborg Cat series. The books are based on his childhood, covering topics such as about being a BAME child moving from Nigeria to East London in the 1980s and learning to live with his disability. 100% of the proceeds from the second book was donated to Children in Need.

In 2019, Ade fronted his very own four-part BBC2 series, Africa with Ade Adepitan. The series documents Ade’s journey through the African continent, visiting an array of contrasting countries within the continent to uncover how modern Africa is changing. Ade is currently working on his next BBC2 series about Climate Change, due to air early 2021.

Clive Rawlings

Clive is a barrister at the U.K Bar where he has practised in public and administrative law for over 20 years. He is a member of Doughty Street Chambers in London.

Clive is nationally recognised as a leading expert in education law, having been a teacher and education manager prior to his career at the Bar. He has regularly advised and represented private individuals, companies, local and national government, voluntary sector organisations and charities. He has developed a particular expertise supporting young people with disabilities or special educational needs.

Clive has held organisational leadership positions for over 35 years, including roles on the senior leadership team of schools, local authorities, chambers management teams, private companies, and voluntary organisations.

Clive is presently engaged in the sport industry as Director of 4 Corners Sports Management, in the strategic oversight of culture, arts, sport and leisure as a Trustee of the Cheltenham Trust, and arranging sporting opportunities for young boys and girls as the Chairman of a large local youth football club in Hertfordshire.

Clive has a long-standing passion and commitment to promote equal opportunities for all and recognises fully the role that confidence and physical challenge plays in developing human skill, expertise and achievement. He is excited by the innovation, energy, enthusiasm and engagement TLH will bring to organisational and personal development and wishes in due course to help TLH develop the confidence muscle™ of young people from a variety of backgrounds through a TLH charitable venture.

Jayne Haines MBE

Jayne is a Senior Vice President of HR at GSK. She has over 20 years’ experience of HR and in leading major transformational culture programmes. Combining strategic thinking, innovation and operational HR expertise, she puts the ‘human’ back into Human Resources.

Over the last ten years she has built her expertise in culture, leadership development, talent, engagement, ‘good work’ and employee experience by diagnosing, designing and leading on strategies to develop people, teams and organisational capabilities to enable performance. For Jayne, performance is about people being confident to be their authentic selves and thriving in the lives they choose.

Jayne is passionate about sport and the role it has had in her life and shares this with anyone who will listen, whilst running, coaching or lifting or watching her children enjoy sport and exercise. When she isn’t on the court or in the gym she is thinking about her other passion – Inclusion and Diversity – through holding a number of positions. She is a member of the Business in the Community (BITC) Age Leadership Team; she Chairs the charity Women in Sport, working closely with Sport England and the government to transform sport for every woman and girl in the UK and is a Board member of the ACAS (Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) Council as an Employer Representative.

Duncan Adamson

Duncan is the Director of the International Snowsport School. He is also a trainer and examiner of ski instructors and has decades of experience in coaching human performance on the slopes.

Duncan believes the very essence of leadership and decision-making is at the core of every skier, no matter their level. Understanding and using these processes empowers the learner to lead their own path on the mountain, to make their own choices and conquer the challenges ahead.

As instructors and coaches, we move towards understanding psychological and neurological responses to better understand how we guide a developing skier. A change of emotion and understanding by the skier at any moment gives them highs and lows. The emotional lows can never be ignored; they are an essential prerequisite for experiencing the highs. Although we present skiing content to overcome and embrace challenge on the slopes; there is a clear application of this experience to everyday leadership in life.

We use skiing to represent examples of the challenges we face; the ultimate goal being to define a process everyone can follow to lead us through life’s challenges.

Dr. David Fletcher

Dr David Fletcher PhD CPsychol is the Director of Performance Psychology and Management at Loughborough University. He is the senior advisor on a PhD co-funded with The Leadership High to research the impact of physical challenge on workplace performance.

His experience of consulting with high-level performers spans the past 20 years and includes working closely with Olympic and world champions from a variety of sports, special forces and emergency services, and senior leaders and their teams in FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 companies. David has published widely in performance psychology and consulting, including ground-breaking research studies in scientific journals and practical articles that demystify complex human phenomena.

He is currently an Associate Editor (Social and Behavioural Sciences section) of the Journal of Sports Sciences, a Consulting Editor for Sport, Exercise and Performance Psychology, and sits on the editorial board of five other international peer-reviewed journals. David has won multiple awards for his professional practice and research from organisations such as the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences, the American Psychological Association, the Association for Applied Sport Psychology, and most recently FindAUniversity’s inaugural British Postgrad PhD Supervisor of the Year Award. He is regularly interviewed about performance psychology-related topics on British national television (e.g., BBC Breakfast, BBC News, Sky News, ITV News, Sky Sports), radio (e.g., BBC World Service, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 5 Live), and newspapers (e.g., The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph).

Kate Holden

A highly accomplished leader with executive board experience and a significant track record of driving profitable growth through digital acceleration, strategic partnerships and building world-class, high-performing teams in media, education and technology sectors.

Kate has enjoyed a fast-track career leading and implementing organisational and digital transformation in high-performing environments, resulting in new value creation, improved performance and award-winning products.

Her leadership skills and experience in managing P&L of up to £223m and staff of 1,000 has been gained through a successful career with some of the most respected global brands: RELX PLC, Pearson PLC, Financial Times and McGraw-Hill Education.

Born in Cyprus and educated at an Italian school, Kate completed her undergraduate studies at Southampton University followed by several executive courses at Harvard Business School, Chicago Management School and Cranfield Management School. Kate is also a freeman of the City of London, a Liveryman and a Mentor at the Worshipful Company of Marketors – a City Livery Co. which promotes Marketing as a force for economic and social good.

Kate enjoys working with boards, CEOs and teams facing strategic choices and responding to the challenges of today’s digital disruptions to achieve scale, grow market share and deliver profitable results. She speaks English, French, Italian and Greek, loves working with different cultures and channels her passion for coaching executives, entrepreneurs and their teams by focusing on helping them gain strategic clarity and create a culture of belief and excellence for themselves and their teams.