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Consultants2022-04-05T15:44:21+00:00

Our People

Meet the team who make it all possible

Our people are the cornerstone of what we do and how we do it.

Our clients appreciate that we’re professionals who work with integrity and flair.

Dr Jacqueline Conway
Dr Jacqueline Conway Founder & Managing Director
Jacqueline is the founder and Managing Director of Waldencroft. She has extensive experience working with progressive CEOs and executive leaders as they operate in an environment of disruption and uncertainty. Jacqueline supports her clients to develop strategic foresight and to build the capacity within executive teams to create and implement effective approaches to systemic change.

Her work combines academic rigour with deep practicality. She has a PhD in executive team functioning from the Adam Smith Business School; she is a certified futurist; trained as a coach at the Tavistock Institute; and is also a certified systemic team coach.

Jacqueline works internationally with some of the most innovative blue-chip organisations in the world. She has designed and implemented award-winning change interventions for a wide range of clients in a variety of industry sectors. Her book, “Advanced Executive Fluency: Responding to new leadership challenges in a complex world” will be published next year.

More about Jacqueline Conway >

Sarah Ballantyne
Sarah BallantyneDirector of Operations
Sarah is an experienced and trusted partner for her clients. She has broad experience in a variety of organisation development consultancy and human resource management roles across both public and private sectors in the UK and abroad. Her style is highly collaborative. Thorough, reliable and flexible, she pays close attention to meet evolving client and project needs.

An experienced facilitator, Sarah has a warm, engaging, practical and action orientated style. She manages teams of consultants in the end-to-end operational delivery with our clients; from scoping, designing, planning and delivering to ensuring the highest of standards are maintained.

Sarah has a degree from the University of Cambridge, is a certified executive coach and is a member of the CIPD. She has been a long serving member then Chair of the Board of Directors of a well-known Scottish charity. She speaks conversational French.

Gordon Laird
Gordon LairdPrincipal Consultant
Gordon’s coaching practice is informed by years of experience and training as a commercially focussed HR leader and partner in different world leading businesses; his diverse experience of organisational change at an individual, team and organisational level; achievements as a specialist in leadership effectiveness, culture change, talent management and organisational development; and over 1000 client hours as a psychotherapist.

Clients and colleagues appreciate Gordon’s ability to walk in their shoes and apply fresh perspectives to their business challenges. He brings a collaborative and systems approach to his work and is skilled in establishing a strong rapport as a basis for discovering enduring change and personal fulfilment.

Gordon sees coaching as a way to effect positive change by helping individuals, teams and organisations to do their best thinking, realise latent resources and talents, make positive choices about their future.

Jon Sykes
Jon SykesPrincipal Consultant
Jon is an organisation development consultant and executive coach who is known for his authenticity and ability to combine empathy, curiosity and directness to help executives and senior managers get to the heart of their challenges. He consults to and coaches leaders and their teams to reach their full potential and take powerful action.

He works with organisations across many sectors as they face complexity and change at an increasingly rapid rate. His dynamic and collaborative style focuses on performance and drives business results.

Jon is dedicated to transforming organisations through coaching leaders and teams to discover their purpose, commit to results, encourage others, and live with passion. His proven track record of achievement in helping executives meet the specific challenges they face is extensive and varied.

Dr Dominik Heil
Dr Dominik HeilPrincipal Consultant

Dominik is a highly experienced consultant who has worked in Europe, the US, Asia and Africa with a specialisation in the areas of strategy and culture management. He has more than 25 years of experience undertaking scenario work across public and private sectors and teaching the method internationally. He works closely with Jacqueline on strategic foresight and futures work across a range of clients and industries.

Alongside his consulting work he is also active in research and is widely published. He is also a programme director and senior tutor at Cranfield School of Management and a sessional lecturer in strategy and leadership and PhD supervisor at the Wits Business School in Johannesburg.

Dominik is pioneering an approach to identify and assess organisational culture as a driver of productivity and creativity in organisations and a quantitative method to detect and evaluate corporate and country reputation risks.

Bryan Sampson
Bryan SampsonPrincipal Consultant
Bryan is a coach and leadership development expert concentrated on working with senior teams to affect their leadership styles, and the climate they create. His specialisms include team development and coaching, leadership workshops and events, and one-to-one coaching. Bryan’s style is to facilitate change through insight, positive support and challenge in a psychologically safe environment.

His passion is to help clients shift their thinking, mind-set and behaviour, creating an effective operating rhythm to become self-sustaining for the future.

He is described as pragmatic and client-centred, with a focus on delivering performance uplift. Challenging yet supportive and positive, with an emphasis on self-learning through insight, practice and feedback.

Lauren McAlpine
Lauren McAlpineExecutive Assistant

Lauren is an experienced, reliable and highly effective Executive Assistant who works closely with Jacqueline and the team to ensure the smooth running of operations within Waldencroft.

She is also a key liaison point for our clients in managing the logistics in the smooth delivery of our client work. She has experience drawn from working within the financial services and advertising industries.

Lauren is skilled in communication, team organisation, event management, and project planning. She brings warmth, tenacity and efficiency to her work.

The disruptors facing business today are too challenging for your executive leaders’ primary focus to be day-to-day execution.

Yet too many executive teams fail to balance their functional leadership: a focus on execution – with enterprise leadership: ensuring the organisation adapts in our new world.

And so often the relationships between executive leaders are characterised more by competition than collaboration.

We can help transform the impact and effectiveness of your ExCo.

Our Practice Areas

Anticipate

Using strategic foresight to anticipate the future

Navigate

Solving intractable problems and navigating complexity

Lead

Developing executive capacity to lead adaptive organisations

Our ability to recognise and manage complexity has been transformed by the work that Jacqueline has done with us. She is a respected and trusted advisor to our Executive Team.

Gordon Dewar, CEO, Edinburgh Airport

My team and I have benefited enormously from Jacqueline’s coaching and guidance. She is quite simply the best in the business in this space.

Ray Fitzgerald, President & COO, WW

We have worked with Jacqueline as a facilitator of change. She’s well-structured, direct yet empathetic, and focused on organisational excellence, illustrated with credible examples.

Richard Williams, Principal & Vice Chancellor, Heriot-Watt University

Your executive team has the potential to be the most potent unit of performance in your organisation.

Find out the key to creating excellence in your executive team.

Our ability to recognise and manage complexity has been transformed by the work that Jacqueline has done with us. She is a respected and trusted advisor to our Executive Team.

Gordon Dewar, CEO, Edinburgh Airport

My team and I have benefited enormously from Jacqueline’s coaching and guidance. She is quite simply the best in the business in this space.

Ray Fitzgerald, President & COO, WW

We have worked with Jacqueline as a facilitator of change. She’s well-structured, direct yet empathetic, and focused on organisational excellence, illustrated with credible examples.

Richard Williams, Principal & Vice Chancellor, Heriot-Watt University

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