Elizabeth English, D.Phil (Oxon.), M.Phil. (Oxon), BA (Hons).
Director, Consultant, Trainer, Coach

Elizabeth's professional experience includes Arts Bodies and NGO's, as well as Higher Education as a university lecturer, researcher and author. She founded Life at Work in 2004 in response to a growing demand for her expertise in professional and personal development.

Her international certification in Nonviolent Communication™ (NVC) gives her a special interest in communication training, ranging from conflict resolution to team-building and stress reduction. She also works with coaching and mediation in professional and personal contexts with leaders, teams and individuals. Her consultation and training style is notable for her warmth and positive engagement, and for her acute and insightful approach.

Simon McKibbin
Consultant, Trainer, Coach

Simon's business experience lies in management and sales. In the 1980s and 1990s he contributed to one of the UK's fastest growing import-export businesses, Windhorse Trading (appearing in the Price Waterhouse Top 100 private companies list). As founder of Life at Work's sister company, Evolution, he has provided development training and consultancy to an extensive and varied group of clients, also acting as visiting university lecturer.

He specialises in stress reduction, NLP, Emotional Intelligence, and Nonviolent Communication™. Simon is a keen-edged and approachable communicator, with an unusual ability for creating positive communities.

Rüdiger Jansen, M.A.
Consultant, Trainer, Coach

Following a career in music and university lecturing, Rüdiger became a management trainer and consultant in 1979. First as independent partner (Impuls - Analyse. Beratung. Training), and later as founder and director of his own Management Training company (Do Evolution Seminare und Verlag GmbH), he has worked with a range of high performance German companies and multi-national multi-utility providers (including Allianz, Hypobank, VGH, and RWE group). He also volunteers training for various non-government organisations in India, and shortly in mainland China.

For Rüdiger, communication, mutual challenge and learning are powerful tools of organisational change that enable people and organisations to access hidden resources and become self-sustaining. His qualifications include Metaplan (group facilitation), NLP (Master Practitioner), and the licence for application of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI Step 1). It is the focus on people that inspires his work. "Even after years of experience, I don't want to miss the adventure that people bring. It's the people that matter – and the people that invariably turn out the surprises."

Taravandana Bsc, SRD, Dip Ad Diet Practice, VRQ Coaching, Cert Counselling, Cert Mentoring, MBTI Assessor, ACMS (Salford)
Consultant, Trainer, Coach

Taravandana is a skilled and experienced Coach, Trainer and Facilitator who has worked in the NHS for twenty seven years as a Clinician (AHP), Senior Manager and Workforce Development Lead. She has worked effectively with Individuals, Teams and Multi-Professional Networks at all levels in Acute, Primary Care, Mental and Public Health as well as within an SHA. She is passionate about enabling people to grow and develop so that services truly benefit patients and their carers.

Michael Chaskalson, M.A.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reductio

Michael has co-designed and co-led a number of mindfulness-based stress reduction workshops in Cambridge. He runs courses for psychologists and other mental health workers at an NHS mental health hospital as well as for postgraduate counsellors in a university setting. He has designed the Mindfulness for Coaches course and has worked as a personal coach at senior executive level.

Michael has a Master's degree with distinction in mindfulness-based clinical interventions, which he studied under the auspices of the Institute for Social and Medical Care and Research at the University of Bangor.

His experience of the world of business began in 1980 when he founded Windhorse Trading, a 'fair-trade' company that today has a turnover in the region of £9 million and donates its profits to charity. After leaving the company, Michael devoted himself to teaching Buddhism and meditation at centres throughout the UK, Ireland and the rest of the world. Under the name Kulananda, he has published six books on Buddhism and meditation, most recently "Mindfulness and Money", published by Broadway and co-authored with Dominic Houlder, a professor at the London Business School.

Michael has lectured on the London Business School's Senior Executive Programme and is currently hosting Discovery events for the School with clients such as Deutsche Bank.