Directors Development Programme Accelerator

James has extensive experience in commercial and operational roles as a leader within high-growth SME environments.

Initially working within executive recruitment within the construction industry, he has also consulted with all sizes of organisations across multiple sectors. James brings a pragmatic, thought-provoking and experience-led perspective to address the challenges faced by leaders today.

He supports leaders to distribute decision making and deploy coaching practice in order to achieve
sustainable growth and empower the organisation throughout.

Janet is a leadership, resilience and business coach. After qualifying as a Chartered Accountant with Ernst & Young she worked in senior management and finance director roles for recognised retailers such as WH Smiths and Littlewoods. She then followed her passion for developing people by becoming a leadership development trainer, currently specialising in wellbeing and resilience with a wide range of companies including BAE Systems, Pets at Home, Janssen Pharmaceutical, SME’s and Charities. She also delivers a wide range of finance programmes from introductory sessions up to Directors Development, together with individual finance business coaching.

Janet enjoys using her finance, business and personal leadership experience, combined with her coaching and training skills, to enable people and teams develop the skills, behaviours and culture they desire.

Janet works with not-for-profit organisations, currently as a Governor for the Trafford College Group, a Trustee & Treasurer for Home-Start Trafford, Salford & Wigan plus a business mentor with the Manchester Business Growth Hub.

Janet is an accredited practitioner for the Kirros RQi resilience programme plus trained in the Drake P3 behavioural profiling system. She is a member of the Association of Coaching (AOC), the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM) and the Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICAEW).

Andy is a qualified chartered accountant with in excess of 15 years’ experience working in corporate finance and private equity organisations, where he did multiple Merger and Acquisitions and fund raising transactions and has sat on 15+ Boards.

He made the cross-over in wanting to build his own businesses and in the last 10 years, is a founding partner of a fast-growing and successful e-commerce company, and in 2019, co-founded and launched an education software business around capturing and evidencing health and wellbeing in children. Andy is also a founding partner of the consultancy/operating partners arm of Gunner Cooke Operating Partners.

The vast amount of businesses Andy has appraised and worked with in his corporate finance and private equity career, coupled with his own “at the coalface” learning experiences of starting, building and developing his own businesses, gives an invaluable insight into how businesses and Boards should function.

Andy is incredibly energetic, hungry, and has a strong desire to succeed in any business he supports.

Martin has worked in the marketing industry for 33 years. As both Marketing Director and Managing Director, he has worked with companies and clients at every level to develop implement marketing strategies and create tactical campaigns across companies as diverse as Lloyds TSB, Mercedes, Scania and Harper Collins. 

Over the last 12 years he has worked with companies throughout a wide range of industry sectors, from start-up entrepreneurs, to larger, well established brands. He delivers training, coaching, and consultancy on every element of marketing, and has trained hundreds of companies in how to develop their marketing from top level strategy to day to day skills and tactical implementation. 

He is a combination of strategist, planner, and tactical marketeer with a wealth of real experience working as, and with, marketing directors, owner-drivers, CEOs and teams. 

Fitz’s 45-year career encompasses director and CEO-level experience since the mid-1990s, award-winning research, and strategic leadership and governance roles with agencies tackling some of society’s most complex challenges including sustainability, community development, and youth violence and knife crime.

His outlook combines enduring and related interests in leadership and inclusion, grounded in a belief that they are foundational to each other – creating inclusion requires leadership, and leadership at its best requires an inclusive approach. Fitz’s work incorporates open and bespoke programme design and facilitation, alongside leadership coaching.

Fitz continues to play a significant role at INPD as a key subject lead on inclusion, evolving a philosophy which goes beyond a more commonplace ‘EDI’ narrative.