Professional life

I’ve been coaching for almost thirty years. In that time, I have coached and provided leadership development courses to hundreds of leaders and executives all over the world.

But most of my work has been with coaches - I have trained and worked with thousands of coaches over the last twenty-five years.

In the 1990s, I was instrumental in setting up the UK Chapter of the International Coach Federation, as well as serving on the ICF Global Board.

For many years, I was lead trainer in Newfield Network’s European coaching programmes. I have also been an external trainer and mentor at several global coaching schools.

I’m currently on the faculty at Henley Business School, where I teach in their coaching and supervision programmes. I also play an active role in Henley’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

I have trained with Coach University, Co-Active Training Institute, Newfield Network, The Strozzi Institute and New Ventures West.

As part of my ongoing CPD, I regularly attend coaching workshops, particularly on diversity, equity and inclusion.

For this year, I am enrolled in Supervision Training with Robin Shohet’s Centre for Supervision and Team Development.

I’ve written chapters for a number of coaching books, and also write occasional articles about coaching on LinkedIn.

Personal life

My life’s journey has been to keep my soul alive in the face of plenty of challenges and pressure to fit in and be someone I wasn’t.

I grew up as a migrant kid in the Home Counties. My father was an Iraqi Jew, and my mother a Lebanese Christian, who left Baghdad before I was born. Life was difficult both inside and outside the home.

My father was an alcoholic prone to frequent bouts of rage, and my mother had serious problems with depression. I really struggled to fit in at school, and had to deal with racist and antisemitic bullying. At the same time, even though I only found this out recently, I also didn’t fit in because I am autistic and didn’t know how to manage being in a neurotypical world.

However, there has always been something inside me that fought to express itself, however clumsily and awkwardly. This often made things more difficult for me as I tried to articulate who I was, but somehow the flame inside of me just wouldn’t die.

Over the course of the last forty years, I have engaged with a lot of deep personal work, including therapy, 12-step recovery, mindfulness and yoga.

Outside of work, I find joy and contentment from singing in choir, watching arthouse cinema,, swimming,, reading fiction, and my two beloved cats, Menucha and Simcha (“Rest” and “Joy” in Hebrew).

I also enjoy photography (I took the non-portrait photos on this site). You can see more of my photos here.