Hannah Isted is the founder of HI Communications, supporting small business owners with their digital marketing.
She is the creator of The Best 90 Days Ever, a marketing membership which shares a quick, daily prompt that shows businesses how to make promoting their work simple, easy and fun. Her ebook ‘Be Your Own Social Media Manager’ teaches the skills needed to take on your own business as a client.
She has worked with hundreds of small business owners, helping them to increase their online presence through workshops, talks and one to one social media management. In her email newsletter and podcast The Social Sunday, she shares marketing advice to help product and service businesses get out of their own way and share how brilliant their work is.
Hannah has a degree in Event Management from Coventry University and a background in charity PR and social media.
Emma Pownall is a strategy and marketing leader with 20 years of inhouse experience driving organic revenue growth and customer lifetime value.
For a decade, she was the only marketer in a high-performing tech boardroom, alongside leaders who didn’t understand marketing’s complexity or evolving role. With a background in engineering, Emma blends analytical and creative thinking to connect buyer needs with commercial outcomes. She champions human-first, AI-enabled approaches that preserve connection and cut through AI ‘marketing’ noise while translating strategy into business language.
Having elevated marketing from misunderstood to essential, Emma founded the Marketers Like Me community. Through her Make Marketing Matter newsletter, podcast and mentoring, she equips marketers with the frameworks and mindset to unlock marketing’s value to growth.
Emma’s leadership and innovation have been recognized through awards: Hubspot’s EMEA Impact Award (2025), Advocacy Academy’s AI Innovator finalist (2025), CRN’s Women in Channel A-List (2019), and Coaching Culture’s Authentic Leader (2022).
Dr Penny Pullan is the author of several books including ‘Virtual Leadership: Practical Strategies for Getting the Best out of Virtual Work and Virtual Teams'(Kogan Page, 2016). She works with people in multinational organizations who are grappling with tricky projects: uncertain, with ambiguous requirements, stakeholders who need to be engaged and virtual teams dispersed around the world. When they work with Penny, clients notice that communication, collaboration, clarity, commitment, connection and confidence grow, and change doesn’t seem quite as tricky as before!
Richard Fox was a partner in The Learning Corporation, a pan European firm of leadership coaches, facilitators and business mentors. He was a PCC credentialed coach with the International Coach Federation, a Master NLP practitioner and a member of the International Association for Coaching.
He helped create The Learning Corporation after a successful period as a partner with KPMG, having played a leading role with them in setting up an office and developing a thriving client base.
As a leadership coach Richard helped leaders and managers create and sustain an environment in which people can express themselves, optimise their potential and do their best work.
He was an experienced business mentor, facilitator and coach with specialist skills in the key areas of developing people in line with strategy; collaborative working, talent development, building strategic alliances, partnerships and structured networks.
As a master facilitator, Richard worked with organisations facilitating workshops on e.g. personal effectiveness, building networking capability, visioning, strategic thinking, managing change, leadership, coaching and mentoring, organisational learning, team working, creativity and innovation.
His previous book, Creating a Purposeful Life: How to reclaim your life, live more meaningfully and befriend time, was published by Infinite Ideas in June 2012.
Lynne Burdon is a pioneering law firm leader with over 30 years’ experience as founding and managing partner of two law firms.
She believes the key to business success is attracting and retaining the best people and the best clients. How? By creating a great working environment alongside the highest levels of professional integrity and innovative ways to give the best practical advice.
As well as her legal training, Lynne has an MBA with distinction and is a qualified Executive Coach (Myler Campbell). She is also an NLP Master Practitioner and is trained in the use of personality tools MBTI and Firo B.
Since stepping down as managing partner Lynne has focused on coaching and leadership training, bringing together her understanding of people and what motivates them with her extensive experience of management and leadership.
Bernard Ross is a co-director of =mc consulting, www.managementcentre.co.uk, a management consultancy working worldwide for ethical organisations.
He co-authored Breakthrough Thinking for Non-Profit Organisations with Clare Segal which received the Terry McAdam Award for Best Non-Profit Book in the USA 2004.
The Influential Fundraiser was nominated as one of the top 5 ‘must read’ non-profit books in the New York Times online in 2009. Most recently Global Fundraising, edited with Penny Cagney, won the Skystone Prize for Research and was published in China in 2018 by Shanghai University Press. Strategy was published by the Financial Times/Pearson in January 2016.
With Omar Mahmoud, Head of Global Knowledge at UNICEF International he wrote Change for Good- behavioural economics for a better world, published by semioscreation/=mc in March 2018.
With his talented colleagues at =mc he has created global strategies for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, WHO, Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontières, and UNICEF international. As a fundraiser he’s raised money to refurbish France’s most famous monument, for a museum to house the world’s largest dinosaur in Argentina, and to save the last 800 great apes in Africa.
Clare Segal is a co-director of =mc consulting.
Her key areas of expertise are communications and personal coaching for charity and NGO leaders. She has pioneered writing high impact fundraising cases using psychological insights for a number of leading charities in the environmental, child protection and healthcare areas. These cases have transformed the impact of charity communications for major donors. Among the charities she has helped are NSPCC, WWF, Save the Children, UNICEF International and the Alzheimer’s Society.
She co-authored Breakthrough Thinking for Non-Profit Organisations with Bernard Ross which won the Terry McAdam Award for Best Non Profit Book in the USA 2004 – the only time Europeans have won this award. Also with Bernard Ross she has co-authored a number of books most recently The Strategy Workout, part of the prestigious Business Gym Series published by Pearson, 2016.
Prior to setting up =mc she was an award-winning video producer and director winning ‘Best Community Video’ award twice in the UK for multi-media work on sexism and volunteering.
Shannon Lundgren is a boutique matchmaker, Harvard MBA and former Fortune 50 senior executive. As founder of Shannon’s Circle, a high-end matchmaking firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area, she specializes in matching intellectually curious, high-achieving singles with like-minded partners. After a successful corporate career leading product strategy and teams, Shannon turned her focus to the one area her accomplished peers struggled with most: finding a compatible life partner.
For more than a decade, she has personally interviewed thousands of singles and overseen curated, highly vetted introductions for busy professionals who value depth, intelligence, and long-term compatibility. Known for her discretion, clear thinking, and warm but candid guidance, Shannon has become a trusted advisor to clients and families navigating modern dating.
Cath competed in rowing at 3 Olympic Games, winning World Championships gold in 2003 and Olympic silver in Athens 2004. As a diplomat for the British Foreign Office for 12 years, Cath specialized in policy and negotiations on conflict issues, with postings to Bosnia and Iraq. Cath now works as a leadership and culture consultant, executive coach, speaker, facilitator and author.
Cath is a member of the Executive Education faculty at the Judge Business School, Cambridge University. She works with leaders across business, education, and sport to develop high performing teams, resilient and inclusive environments, sustainable performance and cultures where people can thrive. Her approach is one that both challenges and supports leaders to think differently and adopt a human-centred approach.
As well as her coaching and consultancy work, Cath is an Independent Advisor to British Gymnastics on cultural reform and writes on topics relating to culture in sport for The Guardian. Cath is also a Trustee of Love Rowing, British Rowing’s charitable foundation that raises funds for projects to increase access to rowing and an Advisor to The True Athlete Project, a non-profit organization which provides holistic development programmes in sport. Cath is a Steward of Henley Royal Regatta and Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge and the University of Wales.
Narina Riskowitz works as a Transformational Therapist and Soul Coach and has developed a series of workshops and meditation courses for personal and spiritual growth. The Foundations of Mastery builds on her earlier book, Lifting the Veils of Illusions: 7 Steps to Spiritual Enlightenment to take your evolution from self-development to self-mastery in this advanced yet highly practical 12-step guide to mastering mind, body and soul.
