• Corporate: I trained as a solicitor at a top-20 law firm, then led fairness and inclusion strategy at a global healthcare company. This work led me to systems-change long before the wider conversation caught up, and taught me the disconnect between what organisations do and what they say they do.

  • Creative: As a designer, I developed a deep understanding of how people relate to art and space. I spent more than a decade designing listed and heritage homes and commercial projects, while mentoring other creatives to develop their own design craft. Creativity is not a hobby to me. It’s existential.

  • Entrepreneurial: I built an award-winning business of my own; a sustainable, profitable creative practice from a standing start, in the male-dominated construction industry. I know what it takes.

  • Human: I have lived most of my forties; running marathons, carrying the grief of caring for, then losing a parent, raising three teenagers and meeting the emptying nest, all while holding significant professional responsibility. As a registered yoga teacher with postgraduate study in embodied presence, I work with somatic integration as well as the mind.

Before building an integrative coaching practice, I spent my career working with structure at every scale; the systems people work inside, the spaces they live in, the lives they build, and my own. What follows here is some of the experience that I bring to the women I work with, most of whom are navigating exactly the transitions I have known.

I worked my way inwards, from the system to the self.

I am researching an MSc in consciousness and transpersonal psychology, and hold coaching certification from Harvard Medical School. But I do not coach from a textbook. Mine is a deliberately independent practice model, informed but not constrained by rigorous academic study and shaped by a lived feminist lens.

The change I work on with you starts at the interior, and moves outward into how you lead, how you build, and how you live. I offer my full human attention, singular voice and an honest partnership to a small number of women through a few structured programmes. I guard the rest of my time with care.

impact:

  • "A rare mix: bess has creative vision with razor-sharp analytical skills too. she is bold and holds my feet to the fire but it never feels too much"

    J, EdTech founder

  • bess's surgical questioning style surfaces insights in me that I am otherwise blind to. our sessions help me see what's really going on and I feel supported to take the clear steps needed to grow my business.

    R, Creative entrepreneur

  • I chose to work with bess in the year I made my partnership application because she has real life experience in my sector and understands what I have to balance with my family at home. my firm offered support but there was no conflict of interest with bess. she was always in my corner.

    S, Partner in a national law firm

  • bess has done her research and her approach is thoughtful and tailor-made. my programme was structured, thorough and has helped me to make important life changes I had been stuck avoiding. I have tried life coaching before but having bess beside me has made all the difference.

    J, Business owner

  • making a big career change in my early forties to establish an interior design business felt both exciting and overwhelming, especially with no experience in a creative industry. thanks to bess I've got a solid foundation and purposeful next steps for thriving in the early years,

    L, Creative business founder

  • Bess' approach strikes the right balance between challenging and nurturing. She developed an excellent understanding of the barriers in my life and helped me to uncover a strength and confidence that is invaluable to me going forward. Bess is very well-read and made recommendations to enhance growth and development tailored to my journey. she is clearly driven to help people become the very best versions of themselves.

    K, Teacher and community leader