Coaching agency launches with former CIoF Chair as cofounder

A new executive coaching, mentoring and facilitation agency formally launched last week, co-founded by former Chair of the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, Richard Taylor. KiKu Coaching’s first official engagement is as part of the wellbeing offering at Ascend Media’s Women in Finance Online Festival, which runs this week, from 23-25 February. The new agency will offer free coaching sessions at the three-day event, which brings together female professionals who are redefining the global finance industry, featuring speakers such as Joanna Place, COO of The Bank of England and Julie Page, CEO of AON. KiKu Coaching has three founders – Taylor, Alex Hodge, and Susie Boyle. They met while completing their ILM Level 7 coaching qualifications, and can draw on multi-sector expertise, from fundraising to finance, media to legal, healthcare to hospitality. Hodge, Taylor and Boyle have spent the last year refining and developing the agency’s proposition, researching the needs of the market against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic and the shifting challenges faced by professionals of all levels in all business sectors. A marketing-research specialist, Hodge spent eight years as director of Simpson Carpenter, where she worked across a range of sectors, including automotive, technology, media, fashion, healthcare and consumer goods. Taylor is a fundraising, marketing and retail specialist with more than 25 years of experience, including executive roles at Cancer Research UK and Macmillan Cancer Support. As well as being Chair of the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, he has served as a trustee of the Tony Elischer Foundation. A registered nurse, Boyle’s career in the NHS culminated with a position as head of nursing for emergency and site services at a London hospital, followed by general manager for emergency and ambulatory care in Dorset. During this time, she completed an MSc in Advanced Practice (Leadership), while advising the NHS on leadership and culture. Boyle also serves as an expert witness for clinical-negligence cases and trains other experts in the medico-legal process and has experience in consulting with Sea Salt Learning and Julian Stodd. Susie Boyle said: “KiKu is a single word that, in Japanese, means ‘to listen, to ask, to hear’ — and that encapsulates our values and actions. Over the last year, we’ve done a lot of listening, asking and hearing, and that has shown us clearly that there’s a gap in the provision of human-centred coaching. We aim to help professionals discover their own voice — not their company’s — which makes for more courageous, creative and productive employees.” Richard Taylor added: “There has never been a more pressing time for people in organisations to be given support to manage challenges. Good leaders recognise that brilliance is buried within an organisation — it seldom sits at the top. This is probably the simplest but most powerful argument for coaching. It takes time to build the trust required to do transformative lifelong work that results in better self-awareness. We want to be known as the agency who can deliver that.” Main image: L-R Susie Boyle, Alex Hodge, and Richard Taylor

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