Who we are

Consultancy

The Founder and Director of Future Lives, Taravandana has proven ability in a range of developmental approaches including coaching, mentoring, mindfulness and resilience, emotional intelligence, action learning, facilitation, change management, leadership and organisational development. She has successfully led a number of large-scale change programmes as a leader and as an external organisational development consultant. Her clients include NHS, private and 3rd sector organisations.

Mindfulness

Taravandana has been practicing and teaching mindfulness for 25 years originally within the Buddhist tradition. She is an experienced accredited mindfulness trainer and coach working with individuals and organizations to increase wellbeing, resilience and leadership effectiveness

Coaching

Taravandana has been coaching and mentoring since 2002. She combines empathy and support with constructive challenge to enable individuals to bring about change, maximize their contribution and increase their levels of fulfillment. She uses a range of tools including appreciative inquiry, mindfulness, emotional intelligence, 360 feedback, Myers Briggs Type Indicator and Firo-B.

Her clients include executive directors, CCG leaders, public health specialists, senior managers and clinicians from across the NHS as well as senior managers from the voluntary and private sectors. She also supervises a number of Coaches.

Qualification and professional membership

Su’s NHS career path has lead to senior roles in strategic organisations. Her expertise has focused on strategic planning, business development, workforce planning, education commissioning, organisation development, quality, change management, leadership development and reform across the public sector. 

Prior to leaving the NHS in 2007, Su was regarded as expert in the field organisational development, service improvement, workforce development, primary care development, education commissioning and workforce planning.

As a consultant Su has led on a range of large-scale consultancy projects that have spanned change programmes including clinical engagement in response to NHS reforms, service and workforce redesign, international evaluation, policy development and developing partnership and stakeholder relationships.

In her consultancy role has experience of working with boards and senior teams designing interventions to support changes in services, culture, team & organisational resilience and leadership.  Clients include the NHS, local government, the police and voluntary organisations. 

Su is an energetic and enthusiastic facilitator – bringing constructive challenge and support to all her projects.  She has particular expertise in the design and delivery of organisational development programmes including service commissioning, service re-design and team coaching.  This work spans national and local delivery and includes working in politically sensitive, complex settings. 

Her clients have included:

• NHS North West Leadership Academy
• NHS National Leadership Academy – Coaching register and Top Leaders Programme
• Range of NHS organisations – clinical commissioning groups, acute and community trusts
• Health Education England – Postgraduate Medical and Dental Deanery
• Local authorities
• Higher education institutions - Universities

Vajramudita herself has 23 years experience of delivering business benefits as a director, manager, and engineer, leading teams in a global pharmaceutical company and a not-for-profit organisation. She has experience of working with global, virtual and local leadership teams in the UK, US, Sweden and India.

She has worked with teams in several global pharmaceutical companies, in public sector organisations, including several NHS organisations, and in the not-for profit sector, including the education sector.

In addition to her BSc(Hons) in engineering, she is currently completing a postgraduate diploma in Executive Coaching and Leadership Mentoring. She is an accredited assessor in Emotional Intelligence (Bar-On EQI), accredited for Transformational leadership, Clinical Leadership 360, Engaging Team 360, and Board 360 and an accredited Mindfulness Trainer.

Vajramudita has specialist expertise in stress management training and challenging interpersonal communication training.

Vajramudita takes a client centred, goal focused approach to coaching to enhance self-awareness, personal growth and effectiveness.

Recent feedback shows clients appreciate her compassionate acceptance, deep listening which brings about insights and her sense of humour.

Julian has been working with Future Lives for five years, bringing with him his invaluable experience of working at a Strategic Health Authority (SHA) providing organisational development, training and change management to NHS organisations in the North West. In his role as a Senior Fellow in Public Policy and Management at Manchester Business School, Julian focuses on executive education and post graduate teaching and research whilst also providing coaching to senior leaders.

Working predominantly with the NHS at board or aspiring board level to provide facilitation, team building and promote understanding, Julian believes by holding a mirror up to clients, he is able to assist them in working more effectively. He specialises in the human dimensions of change and as part of his approach uses a variety of psychometric tools to assist and aid personal and group understanding.

Believing continuous development is vital Julian looks to further his education and training wherever possible. He has a Masters degree in Management Consultancy focusing on Not for Profit organisations (including the NHS and local government teams), is a qualified in administering and analysing Myers Briggs Type Indicator MBTI step 1 & 2 Is an ILM qualified coach and uses a variety of psychometric tools such as FIRO-B, TEIQ and Hogan to help people to understand themselves and also other people.

As an experienced trainer and facilitator, Rob provides focused skills and training workshops with groups who are keen to develop their leadership skills, business plans and build up strengths in community engagement; partnerships development and project management.

Rob has used a variety of coaching techniques and is a strong believer in person centred methodologies which have shown throughout his career to get the best out of, and be the most rewarding for, the people he has worked with. Following a recent career change, he has been focusing on using his coaching experience and is developing his skills by undertaking a Diploma in Coaching.

Working with diverse groups including: local authorities, the NHS, the Police, housing agencies, voluntary, community and private sector organisations means Rob has developed a highly effective and engaging personal approach to training and coaching.

Using stage craft, drama and role play as developmental tools with a number of his clients has proved to Rob to be an effective way of developing understanding based on learners experiencing situations. It is particularly effective with those who have kinesthetic and activist learning preferences and has been effective in facilitation and groups work skills training with local authority managers and officers.

Rob is experienced in helping organisations develop an understanding of stakeholder mapping and community and client engagement techniques in order to help teams to improve business communications and effectiveness.

Rob has been working on a number of grassroots community development projects in the Greater Manchester area in the last 15 months, helping to develop new community led improvement projects in the most deprived areas.

Working as an executive coach for the last five years, Claire takes a cognitive behavioural approach to coaching, working with clients to enable them to set realistic goals in order to help them move toward their potential. Claire has regular supervision sessions to enable her to maintain her professional coaching practice.

She uses a variety of coaching models in order to support clients including the GROW model and the SPACE model. Sometimes, where appropriate, Claire combines these models with psychometric assessments such as the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the Bar-On Emotional Intelligence Assessment Hogan, Me2 and the Occupational Personality Questionnaire.

As a Chartered Occupational Psychologist Claire specialises in the design and facilitation of assessment and development centres, leadership, management and team development and health and wellbeing.  Drawing on her strong research and evaluation background, she helps individuals, teams and organisations to solve problems using bespoke evidence based approaches.

Prior to managing her own consultancy, Claire worked as a Lecturer in Organisational Psychology and research fellow. She has worked at several Universities including Manchester Business School (MBS) and she has conducted projects on behalf of the Health and Safety Executive, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and NHS. Claire continues to work as a visiting research fellow at MBS, tutors on the global MBA programme and acts as a career coach for MBA students. 

Claire is used to working with clients at all levels. She has coached Chief Executives, Chairs, Directors, Aspiring Directors and Junior – Middle Managers. She specialises in career coaching, leadership coaching and coaching to manage stress and wellbeing.