“I first met Cathy about twelve years ago when we were both working for the Co-op Bank; at the time I was progressing in my career with aspirations to broaden my skillset and experience. Cathy recognised my motivation and drive and supported me in achieving my next step up on the ladder into a leadership and management consultant role. I’ve never forgotten that support which was both personal and professional, nor the work she was doing at the time in the talent space which was both impressive and fascinating. Her skill and experience was aspirational to me at the time. More recently when working on a talent piece now as Head of L&D, I connected with Cathy again to draw on her experience that I witnessed twelve years previous, and we worked together on several projects. Cathy’s deep experience and approach have been invaluable, sharing her expertise from design through to implementation and showing again her professionalism, attention to detail and the high standards that I remembered. She is highly-collaborative and quickly understands the organisational landscape. As well as producing quality work, she is still incredibly supportive and flexible and has been again an amazing coach and mentor. I highly recommend Cathy to any potential client, whether that be for her high level of OD skill and experience, as a coach or on a personal level as a mentor or life coach. I enjoy collaborating with her and find that whenever I work with her, I also benefit from my own development as I learn so much from her.”
Jo Grady, Group Head of L&D, Succession Wealth
“I’ve worked with Cathy on a number of occasions over the last three years and have always found her warmth, insight and sound advice to be invaluable. She has helped us with a number of organisational development projects, and done a fantastic job each time, but I am particularly grateful for the way she went above and beyond in supporting my team and me through the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her response at very short notice to a call for help is testament to her commitment to her clients, and genuine care for others. I can’t recommend her highly enough!”
Rob Johnson, Founder and Director, Research Consulting
“Working with Cathy over the past couple of months has been a hugely positive and productive experience. In a very difficult time professionally and personally for many of us, Cathy’s warm and motivational demeanour has been a welcome antidote, and her insights have been ones that I will take on with me throughout my career. I’m very grateful to have had the opportunity to work with Cathy in this time and it has, undoubtedly, helped me to continually assess and improve what I can offer with confidence and positivity.”
Victoria Ficarra, Researcher, Research Consulting
“I’m really proud of how our team has progressed this year. I don’t think we could have done it without your hard work and facilitating genius.”
Operations and Supply Chain Manager, British Gypsum
“Cathy provided us with effective support in the development of our operational strategy. She gives a strong process support combined with a light touch. Great to work with.”
Ian Walsh, Operations and Supply Chain Director, PAM, Saint-Gobain
“Cathy worked with us in creating a framework and toolkit for the management and development of performance in a head office environment. Her input into our project was critical to its success. Her guidance, experience and expertise coupled with her professional and flexible approach ensured that we delivered a high quality project on time. She quickly became a valued colleague and part of our team rather than purely a consultant. She was extremely flexibility and proactive and consistently delivered high quality work to tight deadlines.
As an expert in her field, Cathy’s experience and network of contacts meant that she was able to contribute robust, authoritative and leading edge research on a wide area of topics. Cathy contributed to shaping and delivering opportunities beyond her original remit and always encouraged us to raise the bar on the work we were doing. I would recommend others to work with her and already have. I would also not hesitate to work with Cathy again should the opportunity arise.”
Gill Howe, Business Partner, John Lewis
“Initially we asked Cathy to design and create some self learning modules for a HR capability project. What Cathy became was a partner co-creating the initiative with us. Her expertise and guidance helped us to create an offering beyond the initial scope of the work which will have the flexibility to grow along with HR Manager’s capability. This is testament to her commitment, tenacity and creativity.”
James Clayton, Learning and Development Manager, Boots UK Limited
“Cathy Brown is an Occupational Psychologist. She runs her own business, Evolve Consulting Services Ltd, where she works with individuals, teams and functions to manage transitions and change.”
Municipal Journal
“Cathy helped us to design tools to help the business to recruit, develop, grow and retain employees. Her input, patience and endless good humour enabled us to get the work done ahead of schedule. She was a key member of our team and we’re all incredibly proud of this work that we’ve achieved together. We couldn’t have done it without her.”
Hannah Thomson, HR Director Avis – Sharon Fennell, Head of Talent Avis
“Cathy is an exceptional OD consultant that delivers business focused results. Cathy partnered with me to build and deliver the talent strategy for CFS including the identification, assessment and development of high potential senior leaders. Cathy instils confidence in me as a client in particular facing off to the most senior executives utilising her skill and expertise in her approach, which includes coaching and building and sustaining strong trustworthy interpersonal relationships. Cathy comes with the strongest recommendation and if you have the opportunity to engage and work with Cathy, grab it. You will in return get excellent value for money and extremely high standards of credible business focused OD consultancy and deliverables.”
Peter Mulcahy, Head of Talent and Leadership, Co-operative Bank
“Cathy Brown is an occupational psychologist with over a decade of HR consultancy experience across many blue-chip businesses in private, public and not for profit sectors. For the past three years she has run her own consultancy … which specialises in helping people to realise their potential and optimise their performance in work and life.”
Leadership Today
“I have had the pleasure of working with Cathy since 2012! Immensly likeable, she has the uncanny ability to develop complex concepts into tangible business plans whilst leaving the receiving Company in a sustainable state; impressive! Having recently moved to a new Company, I have no hesitation in inviting Cathy to join me in the new venture … if she will have me!!!”
Helen Hardy, HR Director, Jewson (part of Saint-Gobain group)
“Cathy supported me as a subject matter expert and project manager whilst creating and launching a new performance management system at Safestore. She can take a huge piece of conceptual work and transform it into tangible milestones which can be tracked effectively and thus delivered to plan. Cathy promotes best practice & provides external bench-marking thanks to her strong network but her strength lies in her ability to balance those things with pragmatic and fit for purpose solutions which best suit the company and culture she is operating within.”
Louise Wood, Head of Talent, Safestore
“Working with people you like makes the process so much easier, therefore more enjoyable and ultimately much more productive – I enjoy working with Cathy. Personable with a solid common sense approach – no hesitation in recommending.”
Graham Anderson, System Architect of OpenCRM
“I had a great coaching experience with Cathy. She is a highly skilled practitioner and fully committed to meeting the objectives we set at the beginning of our relationship. I would be delighted to work with her again in the future.”
Zack Hocking, Head of Savings Investments, Co-operative Bank
“Cathy was able to use leading edge methods and tailor them for our business. She built our confidence in her approach and delivered great results, identifying development areas for a broad range of directors and potential directors. I would certainly use her services again.”
Carole Harvey, Finance Director
“I have enjoyed working with Cathy immensely. Her knowledge in the area of talent assessment and development is second to none. Our project at CFS was a great success due to her energy, drive and commitment. Always willing to bring new ideas to the table and with her excellent eye for detail I would highly recommend Cathy to any organisation looking for an expert in talent development.”
Hattie Renshaw, Head of Resourcing and Talent at Synexus
“Cathy is a superb business psychologist with a rare combination of skills including the knowledge gained from her MBA and her qualifications as a psychologist. I have engaged Cathy to mentor and coach companies at the two business incubation centres that I have managed, and I cannot recommend Cathy highly enough. Hiring Cathy to work with the start up businesses meant that our relationships with tenants were incredibly positive, and our clients truly valued the assistance they were given. Cathy has been able to give real help to every one of our businesses – she is a busy lady, but if you can get some of her time it will transform the way you do business.”
Joanne Derbyshire, CEO, JDF Associates Ltd
“Cathy provides insight, subject matter expertise and a rigorous approach to project management and delivery. She listens carefully to the brief, works well with my team and me and has become a valued Thought Partner in numerous areas of our Talent agenda.”
Hannah Thomson, HR Director, Avis and Budget UK
“Cathy is a very thorough, knowledgeable, ethical, and focused business psychologist. She is pleasure to work with as she can always find a solution to a problem and brings a calm presence to a group when people are under pressure.”
Terry Sexton, Business Psychologist at Create Network Ltd
“Thank you Cathy for the excellent work done with our Executive team over the last 12 months. Having now been in your company as a participant and as a client, I have been delighted by the clarity and quality of your work. The latest assignment we worked on together with our multi-cultural Executive team could have been a challenge but you delivered impeccably and all my colleagues are very complimentary of the work you guided us through and helped us achieve. It was a pleasure working with you again. We are in a better shape as a team thanks to this work with a clear path to develop our people and organisation.”
Amelie Dickinson, Head of HR at Saint-Gobain Formula
“Cathy has recently worked with our Executive team to define the future design of our organisation and core capabilities that will support our business strategy. Cathy has a wealth of experience and expertise which, together with her approachable and engaging style enabled us to undertake this task and deliver tangible outputs at pace, whilst enjoying the process! Cathy is a great listener and can quickly ‘unpick’ what might seem complicated and unclear, re-framing this to create defined and manageable objectives, offering a straight-forward way of working to get there. Cathy is a very organised and proactive project manager, ensuring the scope of work is clearly defined, agreed and regularly reviewed. Cathy is a brilliant facilitator – very adaptable, willing to ‘go with the flow’ and isn’t phased if the scope or format needs to change at short notice (or even in real time!). I truly value Cathy’s expertise and insights; she always brings a fresh perspective, thought-provoking questioning and a pragmatic, tangible way forward – a real pleasure to work with.”
Sally Rao, Head of HR at Saint-Gobain Weber
“Having worked with Cathy since early 2014 I find her not only a leader in her field but also incredibly personable and adaptable with an approach and style that fits so well within our business. I have not worked with many consultants that can not only get under the skin of an organisation and its culture so quickly, but immediately become part of the team and make a real difference…Cathy does this with ease and I would not hesitate to recommend her and her work.”
Becky Baxendale, Head of Organisational Development, British Gypsum
“Cathy has worked with me both as a colleague and as a consultant. Cathy is extremely talented and creative. She will bring new thinking to any project you need. She is also very customer-focused and will always deliver what she promises. She can be trusted to do what is needed and add value by bringing a fresh perspective to your business.”
Susie Maskell, HR Partner, Boots
“I first worked with Cathy when she was part of the HayGroup employed by Boots to train senior HR professionals in focused-interviewing for use in executive recruitment, assessment and development. The training was rigorous and exacting. Cathy was part of the core team delivering the training, quality assessing our reports and coaching us in the skills needed for senior management assessment in Boots. Always extremely professional, knowledgeable, well-structured and supportive, Cathy ensured we achieved the right level of skill and consistency for us to deliver to the highest standards. I would always recommend Cathy for any assessment work whether it be the design of competencies, assessor training or conducting in-depth assessments to a senior level.”
Yasmin Holmes, HR Partner, Boots
“Cathy came from a consulting background to work in Boots and brought with her significant expertise in competencies and behavioural interviewing. She is a very thorough individual who does the right analysis to ensure that the competency models she develops are robust but also are right for practical application in the workplace. In the work that Cathy did at Boots she developed a comprehensive approach based on competencies which incorporated performance management, career planning and interview approaches. She worked closely with the senior Finance team to introduce the model and help them use it effectively to very positive feedback from senior leaders. She is a very experienced behavioural interviewer and used her skills to train others in Boots to build capability in the HR team. A very professional individual who brings depth of thought and expertise to her work.”
Nicky Hill, Director of HR, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust
“Cathy is a fabulous person to work with. She is kind, insightful and generous with her ideas, concepts and clear thinking abilities. She makes progression fun, seamless and totally manageable. I thoroughly enjoyed working with Cathy in numerous ways, from Gentle Touch Reflexology, book writing, career work and personal support. In every sphere she excels.”