Here are a few of my recent projects

Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity - Strategy Development

Working with partner consultant Julie Wilson-Dodd, we guided GOSH Charity through a 15 month strategy development process, helping the charity to deeply consider its purpose, role and focus for the next 5 years.  The process asked critical questions for the charity’s ambition, introduced new ways of agile, iterative and cross-organisation working with staff and key stakeholders to develop a clear strategic framework balancing ambition and deliverability. 

 The result unites strategy and brand around two clear pillars: Best Chance — pioneering breakthroughs and future treatments for seriously ill children — and Best Childhood — ensuring every child and family is supported through their GOSH journey. Simple enough to be memorable; substantial enough to drive real decisions.

Hair & Care - Organisational narrative and Business Processes

Hair & Care was founded by Anna Cofone, drawing on her own family experience to challenge assumptions about blind and partially sighted people's relationship with style and self-expression. In just a few years, the organisation had built a remarkable reputation — but how it talked about itself hadn't kept pace, and its internal systems weren't meeting the needs of a growing team.

 Working with Anna, her team and their community, I led a process to clarify what Hair & Care most needed to focus on at this stage of its development, and to strengthen the practical foundations — financial management, business operations and the founder's own leadership — that would allow it to grow sustainably.

Mental Health Charity — Cultural Reset

A midsized mental health charity had experienced significant turbulence following abrupt leadership changes and deep internal cultural issues. The Board needed an experienced, values-led CEO to lead a sensitive listening exercise across the organisation, and to shape a credible, realistic approach for lasting change.

The resulting roadmap gave the Board and incoming leadership team a shared understanding of the issues and priorities, and a clear, co-designed plan for the work towards rebuilding trust and culture across the organisation.

Gendered Intelligence - Critical Friend Support

Funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Youth Strategy Fund, GI's CEO Jay Stewart selected me as his Critical Friend — a role that has now spanned almost two years and grown to encompass support across the whole organisation.

The work has balanced one-to-one support for Jay with broader engagement across the senior team and Board. This has included supporting GI's policy and influencing work, working with the incoming Chair on governance development, and designing and facilitating a Board and Executive Away Day to clarify the relationship between them — producing a practical working agreement that now shapes how they lead together.

RedThread - Critical Friend Support through merger

Shortly after Lucie Russell took up post as Interim CEO, it became clear that RedThread's financial model was under serious strain. With funding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation's Youth Strategy Fund, Lucie brought me in as Critical Friend to support her and the senior team as they worked through their options — including the viability of a merger — and navigated that process with their Board.

 My role was to provide a steady, trusted presence through a period of acute pressure: supporting the team's effectiveness under stress, an additional perspective on working through the practical decisions and financial implications, and ultimately supporting them as they implemented the transfer of RedThread's services to Catch22 and the closure of wider operations.

Senior Leadership Team — Accelerated Effectiveness

Ongoing development work with a tailored programme for a newly formed Senior Leadership Team, with the goal of accelerating their effectiveness, connectivity and shared sense of purpose.

Work together has accelerated their development as a cohesive team, clarifying critical priorities, establishing clear roles and shared expectations, and building a strong foundation for the culture they want to model across the organisation.

  • "Emma has been a powerful source of support through pivotal moments in my career. She creates a safe, reflective space where I feel truly heard, and her insight consistently brings clarity and perspective. Our conversations are often cathartic, leaving me more grounded, confident, and purposeful."

    Tayo Salami, former Executive Director of Finance and Resources (Interim) at Refugee Council

  • "Working with Julie and Emma on our GOSH Charity strategy has been a genuinely collaborative and thoughtful experience. They brought clarity, structure and calm to a complex process, creating space for challenge, creativity and honest reflection. Crucially, they provided reassurance and steady guidance during the ‘messy middle’ of the work, helping us stay confident and focused when the answers were still emerging. Their ability to listen deeply, draw out diverse perspectives and turn big conversations into clear direction has been invaluable. They have been trusted partners throughout, strengthening both our strategic thinking and our confidence in the path ahead.”

    Louise Parkes, CEO, GOSH Charity

  • "Emma’s support over a really tricky time has been absolutely invaluable — she has been a rock to me as well as to my Executive Team. She combines such an empathetic and relational approach with an aligned, solution-focused and practical lens, which delivers a really holistic support offer. Emma made us feel absolutely cared for and heard, but that didn’t stop her asking laser-focused questions and getting stuck in with much-needed project work too when requested.”

    Lucie Russell, former CEO, RedThread

  • "We worked with Emma to explore the potential for us as a funder to develop a capacity building support offer for our grantees. We really valued Emma’s consultancy approach, which helped us think about what we wanted to achieve and allowed for a highly iterative and collaborative process. Most of all we trusted Emma to bring an informed and credible approach to consultation with our grantees. We would recommend her without hesitation."

    Youth Sector Funder

  • “Beyond one-to-one work, Emma has added real value across the organisation through her facilitation. She has delivered workshops with our Board of Trustees, our Managers and our Public Engagement team. Emma is a highly skilled facilitator- holding the overarching intention of the work and making sure that we are successful on our own terms. She is attentive to group dynamics, able to read what is happening beneath the surface, and brings people with her in a way that builds shared ownership rather than dependency. Her experience as a Chief Executive is evident. She grounds the work in real organisational life (which is always busy operationally) but supports the senior leaders to be thinking and acting more strategically, helping us to see what's on the horizon and where we are heading.”

    Jay Stewart, Founder and CEO, Gendered Intelligence

  • "Working with Emma has been hugely valuable for both me personally as a founder and for Hair & Care as an organisation. Her ability to ask the right questions, quickly understand the heart of our mission, and translate that into clear, actionable direction was immensely helpful and impactful.  What makes Emma so special is that she leads with both expertise and humanity. She has a rare ability to make you feel genuinely supported whilst also challenging you to think bigger and operate more strategically. Our creative and narrative sessions were transformative, helping us articulate not just what Hair & Care does, but why it matters and where it can go."

    Anna Cofone, Founder and CEO of Hair and Care

Some of the organisations I have worked with

The Charlie Waller Trust

Off the Record

Gendered Intelligence

The Girl’s Network

Hair & Care

Redthread

GOSH Charity

User Voice

Refugee Council

Liberty

The Prudence Trust