who we are

Joy Burnford is the Founder and Director of My Confidence Matters, and an experienced business leader, entrepreneur and mentor. She has over 20 years’ experience, working for a number of corporates and start-ups.

In 2017, Joy set up My Confidence Matters to shine a light on the importance of confidence at work. As a curator of confidence, Joy brings together experts to run leadership, coaching and mentoring programmes and aims to put confidence at the heart of every organisation. She also pioneers research relating to gender balance, leadership and confidence at work.

As a leading advocate for progressing gender balance in the workplace, Joy is also a speaker, podcast guest and regular contributor at Forbes.com on the subject of women’s leadership and confidence.

Joy is a mum to two wonderfully different children, aged 7 and 11, and so understands the challenges that many of us face on a daily basis!

Connect with Joy on LinkedIn.

Helena Clayton is our Head of Corporate Coaching. She is an inspiring leadership coach and leadership development consultant, working 1:1, and with teams and groups at Board and senior levels. Previously running two organisations at Exec team level, she knows just what it feels like to lead amid the significant challenges of today’s organisational life. 

Over 20 years of consulting she has supported many people and organisations to strengthen their personal power and impact as well as their leadership capability.  She goes deep and helps her clients develop powerful inner resources and is also highly practical in developing toolkits of practical strategies.

Helena’s style is straight talking and empathic, clear and compassionate. In balancing both support and challenge she helps clients see their blindspots, develop new insights, see things from a different perspective and try new ways of working. 

Helena has worked with clients across professional and financial services through to UK Civil Service and not-for-profits. 

Kathryn Wakefield is a well-reputed coach, facilitator and consultant. She has worked within a diverse range of industries, as well as experience working in the public sector and not-for-profit. Kathryn brings a wealth of experience working with leaders and teams, especially as part of executive development, leadership and behavioural change programmes. She is recognised for coaching that helps individuals add more value to their organisation.

Kathryn’s areas of specialism are long-term behavioural change, managing complexity, and increasing personal and professional effectiveness. Engaging, creative, and evidence-based, Kathryn’s coaching is known for being ‘enjoyable, challenging and a breath of fresh-air’. As a certified women's coach Kathryn's clients report more self awareness, less self-judgement, more confidence and comfort in their own skin, leaving them feeling more empowered overall.

Kathryn graduated Henley Business School with an MSc in Coaching and Behavioural Change, and is a certified MBTI and Hogan practitioner, as well as an International Coach Federation (ICF) Member and Association for Executive Coaching and Supervision (APECS) Associate Practitioner. She has extensive experience applying a wide variety of practical tools and models to achieve learning and change outcomes.

Tímea Kristóf is a talent and organisational development leader with over 20 years experience in successfully managing learning & leadership development in multi-cultural environments. She brings experience from FMCG, IT, gaming / entertainment, manufacturing, renewable energy, healthcare & non-profit industries.

She is an intuitive and result-oriented coach with a passion to develop senior leaders, new line managers and team performance. A strategic thinker, she is often called a highly skilled and engaging facilitator with an adaptive style and creativity. She enjoys challenging the status quo, driving change and working in an environment that engenders innovation and empowers employees to bring their authentic self to work.

Katherine Ray has been coaching individuals at all levels for 10 years and is a trained and accredited coach with the EMCC.

Her HR career spans 18 years, holding a number of senior HR, L&D and Talent Management roles in dynamic and fast paced FMCG and Media organisations such as Diageo, Warner Bros, BSkyB and most recently Unilever. She now runs her own organisational and people development consultancy called Talentology Ltd to help organisations with the challenge of attracting, developing and retaining great people.

Katherine’s background and career has enabled her to experience the entire employee life-cycle, but her specific areas of interest are: Talent Management, Manager and Leadership Development, Facilitation, Diversity & Inclusion, Mentoring and Coaching.

She is well known for her work in the mentoring space, and is a Chartered Member of the CIPD, a CIPD trainer and designed the mentoring training for the CIPD Steps Ahead Mentoring Programme.

Chris Williams brings with him 20 years experience of working as a coach to individuals at political, strategic and operational levels. In addition, he has led operational front line service delivery teams in a large national organisation and run his own business for over 20 years. His practice as a coach is therefore informed by his own management and leadership experience. He brings a client focussed and practical approach to his coaching that combines support with constructive challenge. An excellent listener who is willing to offer an opinion as well.

Chris works with organisations, teams and individuals to develop leadership and management capability, interpersonal effectiveness, equality and diversity awareness, change management and communication skills. A friendly, engaging and thought provoking coach who builds a quick rapport and trust, his work is practical and pragmatic but underpinned by sound learning and theory. 

Lisa Mills is an accomplished leader and coach with over 25 years’ experience working with people of varied cultures to realise new possibilities, drive change and transformation whilst leveraging personal strengths.

Lisa has worked with the senior executives across a corporate global organisation by coaching individual skills to lead across boundaries. She will orchestrate coaching conversations with individuals in a bespoke way in order to push beneath the surface and help create interventions that provide real and profound transformational change.

She understands the challenges of role transition, leadership, culture, change and creating team excellence and is truly passionate about releasing individual and team potential.

Lisa’s belief is that leadership really is limitless, having a team to lead is a dimension that starts with self-leadership, and you need to lead from the inside out before you can lead those around you. Lisa asks individuals to be open, be ready and be excited to delve into, dissect and build upon the brilliance they have within them.

Wendy Aspland is a highly experienced leader and personal development professional, having worked across all levels of operational management, as well as personal development roles. She is known for being an empathetic leader, creating engagement and being able to have the difficult conversations with compassion. Her coaching clients value her “warm and engaging” manner and her ability to “quickly tune into and challenge thinking”.

Pragmatic and commercially focused with extensive and highly transferable skills and experience, Wendy is collaborative, consultative and measured with a passion for humanistic leadership and workplace cultures. She is skilled in personal and organisational development; and leading high performing cross functional teams in the effective planning, implementation and monitoring of strategically important projects and deliverables.

Wendy thrives on delivering exceptional results through collaboration and team leadership.

Stephanie Aitken is an experienced trainer and coach.  She started her career as a lawyer working for over 10 years as commercial media lawyer at companies like MTV and Channel 4 before switching careers in 2011 - preferring to focus on the people side of business.

She now works as a corporate trainer and supports people within organisations of all sizes, overcome their communications challenges.  She loves to help individuals speak with impact, charisma and influence; knowing that all three qualities are in fact skills that can be learnt and developed by anyone. She has worked for companies such as Network Rail, Womble Bond Dickinson and Barclays.

Having certified as a One of Many coach and NLP master practitioner, she is passionate about supporting women to build their confidence, be more courageous and to step up in their roles; so that they can be inspiring leaders, fulfil their potential and thrive.

Jane Renton is an experienced media and presentation trainer. She has worked with several international blue-chip companies and public institutions, to train senior leadership teams as well as others in the public eye. She was a presenter of The Money Programme, BBC2’s former economic and business current affairs flagship, as well as author of the critically-acclaimed Economist Book, Coaching & Mentoring. 

She has also written extensively for a number of national newspapers, including The Sunday Times and Observer, where she was a senior staff writer for seven years.  She also possesses a number of qualifications in speech and drama from the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art.

Anne Walsh is a voice and vocal communications coach with extensive one-to-one and group business coaching experience in the private, corporate, public and charitable sectors with clients from the fields of finance, law, HR,  music, publishing, politics, property, local government, psychotherapy, science, medicine, media, art, health and well-being, IT, teaching, accountancy, consultancy, interior design, fashion, journalism, research, secretarial and administration, higher education (lecturers and MA\PhD students.)

She was Voice and Communications Trainer at the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama from 2008-2012 and designed and delivered in-house training in London, nationally, and in Europe, Jordan and India.

Susan Heaton-Wright, an ex-international opera singer, shares her Executive Voice coaching with directors, teams and individuals in organisations around the world. With her clients often being asked to feature on Sky News, Radio 4 and headline industry conferences she uses her experience as a performer and teacher to enable clients to make an impact when they speak.

She regularly appears on BBC radio and TV providing expert advice on effective speaking and how to engage with your audience, as well as being an international public speaker herself for businesses, professional groups and at conferences.

Melanie Gow says in some worlds what she does is teach leaders, entrepreneurs and changemakers Brand Story Strategy; in her world she believes she makes legends.

When her father died, her marriage broke down, and she lost a second book deal, and decided to go out for a walk with her sons - over the Pyrenees and across Spain, for 800km and 33 days, and they were aged 16 and 12. 18,000 people walk the same route every, single, day, but the power of story meant a single mum was singled out to be telling hers from a crowd-funded book, to a sold out national inspirational speaking tour, and on to the TEDx red circle.

Helena Holrick is the Chief Cheerleader at Helping You Shine. She is a personal progress coach working 1:1 and running workshops and mastermind groups - nudging, pushing, prodding, and goading her clients to ‘Succeed As You’ with confidence and joy.

An experienced coach and trainer, she has worked with 1000’s of individuals and 100’s of businesses to upskill personally, professionally and practically, in a variety of settings from opening TGI Friday Stores to managing Coaching and Mentoring at London Fire Brigade.

She was always an “intrapreneur”, never quite sticking to the job description given and always working to make things better. She now runs her own business helping individuals to ‘Find, Own and Share Your Brilliance’ by unlocking their unique creative expression, developing their confidence to stand in the power of it and then showing them how use and share it with the world.

Hilary Lees is a Certified Professional Coach, Trainer and Public Speaker who is passionate about enabling people to overcome stress and overwhelm and bring out their natural creativity and resourcefulness so they can fulfil their potential and thrive at work. She specialises in helping business leaders to build their mental fitness so they can deal positively with the many challenges and changing demands they face in their personal and professional lives.

She formerly worked for twenty years as an Occupational Therapist in a variety of NHS mental health services and she draws on both this clinical expertise, and her ten years’ subsequent experience as an Executive and Leadership Coach, to teach practical tools and techniques to transform people’s mindsets, develop their resilience and increase their personal fulfilment, interpersonal effectiveness and performance.

Hilary’s style is warm, engaging, authentic and empowering. She inspires those who hear her speak  and loves to make a difference by enabling others to overcome any limiting stories or situations that get in their way so they can take control, embrace their uniqueness, stand in their power, and confidently step up with their authentic gifts and talents to make a difference in the work that they do. Her clients range from senior executives; middle managers and emerging leaders; to mothers negotiating the maternity transition and people navigating career crossroads from across the creative, public, private and not for profit sectors.

Amanda Paradine is a career and personal development coach, working with people 1:1, in groups and running corporate development workshops and training programmes.

She draws on a 20 year corporate career working as an HR Business Partner with both large corporate businesses and within consultancies, where she specialised in talent management, training and workplace wellbeing.

Amanda's style is warm, calm and empathetic. She is an NLP Practitioner and is never happier than when working with people feeling stuck in life, helping them to believe in themselves, design a life that makes them happy and fulfill their potential.

Sarah Le Breton is a gender consultant, adviser, writer and researcher. Her mission is to help advance the tipping point for gender equality, working collaboratively with others to promote better life-work balance for all.

She holds an MA in Modern Languages from the University of Cambridge and an MA in Gender Analysis in Development from the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia. Her work draws on 30 years of global work and life experience, first as a social development technical adviser, research and project manager and educator, and also as an editor, writer and a trailing spouse and mother.

Manda Lakhani is one of our strategic advisors. Manda is passionate about connecting and advising senior leaders and organisations to help them utilise their resources (time, energy and wealth) to improve the spiritual, emotional and physical wellbeing of people and the planet. With an MBA in Finance, a professional marketing qualification and a background in financial services, she has had an extensive career in marketing, asset management, personal finance and strategic planning. She is also Trustee & Director of The Hunger Project (UK) and Trusted Advisor to the CEO of Action for Happiness.

Helen Grimshaw is one of our strategic advisors. Helen has over 20 years of international business development, marketing, relationship, and programme management experience, and was part of the founding team that established a semantic search company in the United States.

Most recently in her capacity as Senior Vice President of Client Services in EMEA & APAC at NTENT, she worked on implementations of complex, large-scale AI search technology projects across multiple countries, time zones and cultures.

Prior to this, Helen spent over seven years working directly with government bodies, SMEs and multinationals in emerging markets, where she helped countless businesses raise their profiles and develop more compelling marketing strategies to successfully engage with their target audiences.

However, Helen considers her greatest achievement is being mum to two young girls, who have taught her the most important things in life, including the value of time management!

Sarah Burgess is our Client Relationship Manager. Sarah works closely with our clients to provide ready-made or bespoke high impact training sessions and ongoing transformational coaching programmes. She was previously Head of Business Development at Source Global Research.

Claire Dagwell is our Marketing and Operations Executive. Claire supports our marketing activity and research projects, whilst also supporting the business in the delivery of our programmes. Claire previously worked in law firms as a solicitor at Linklaters, as a Senior Business Development Executive at Ashurst and for a number of organisations on their marketing activity.

Alexia Padgham is PA to Joy Burnford.