About Lee

I started working in business at 13, in my local ice cream shop, and I've never really stopped.

Before I set up my coaching practice in 2003, my last leadership role was as General Manager of a Borders Books and Music store — responsible for a 24,000 square foot retail operation, the P&L, and everything in between. The most important thing I learned there wasn't about process, though process matters enormously. It was about people. I led a turnaround of a struggling store in Brighton, and what actually turned it around was understanding what was getting in people's way — and helping them, or helping them move on.

That experience is why I coach the way I do. I'm not someone who learned leadership from a textbook. I've been in the complexity, the pace, the difficult conversations, the moments when theory and practice feel like completely different languages. I know what it actually feels like to lead.

Since starting my practice, I've worked with hundreds of leaders — at London Business School, on Edinburgh Business School's MBA, across banking, finance, consulting, pharmaceuticals, FMCG, the arts, and the charity sector. I've coached a university Vice-Chancellor, served as the Obama Foundation's only European coach, and worked with CEOs of organisations delivering food aid in Africa. The thread through all of it is the same: what motivates people, what stops them, and how understanding yourself more deeply changes everything about how you lead.

My qualifications span philosophy, psychology, psychotherapy, and coaching — I'm a Master Certified Coach, a qualified counsellor, and something of a part-time academic. A few years ago I was invited to become a Senior Research Associate at the Intellectual Forum, Jesus College Cambridge, which delighted me enormously and still does.

I bring all of this to the work. But mostly I bring curiosity, directness, and genuine investment in the people I work with.

Personal:

Even as a child I was fascinated by the big questions — what life is, how we make meaning from it, what it looks like to be fully human. That curiosity has never left me.

It's taken me into academic philosophy and psychology, into retreats and seminars, into Landmark, energy work, meditation, dance, and deep psychospiritual practice. I am, at heart, a seeker — someone genuinely committed to freeing herself from the limitations that upbringing and culture quietly install in all of us. I bring that commitment to my clients, because I don't think you can take someone further than you've been willing to go yourself.

I also believe the individual sits within a larger system. Changing what's possible for one person matters — and so does changing what's possible for all of us. That belief led me to found Elect Her, a UK-wide social enterprise working to get more women into elected political life, which I led for a decade. I also stood for the Scottish Parliament in 2016.

The inner work is never finished. There is always more to discover, more ways to come alive — alongside, not instead of, finding peace with the world as it is. Both matter to me.

My happiest place is in the park with my dog, watching life happen all around me.