Nick Ellse

Following university Nick spent 3 years in exporting, working overseas for much of that time. In 1981 Nick joined the board of a start up business involved in asset based lending and successfully built that business during the 1980's until it's sale to the TSB group in 1994. Nick spent the next 12 months integrating the business with TSB resulting in new revenue growth of over 500% within 12 months.

Following the success of the TSB integration Nick was approached by Barclays to support the turnaround and integration of their asset based lending business. At Barclays Nick directly led a team of over 70 people through restructuring, realignment with the Barclays group and successful reversal of 5 years decline in market share.

In 1997 Nick was approached by Ernst & Young and joined their corporate restructuring group as coach / facilitator to the partner / manager group and as a member of the management team. This led into Nick running extensive skills transfer programmes for the group then the wider firm, building the skills base for the partnership to grow revenues to meet its goals. Highly credible, he also became the internal director of choice to run programmes in the international arena.

In 2000 Nick joined a London based consultancy as a director and shareholder, with responsibility for leading the executive development business, and continuing sales training and executive coaching.

Nick co-founded raising the bar in 2002 with Mike Lunnon-Wood (who sadly passed away in March 2008)  and now splits his time between coaching senior executives and teams, sales and sales management training, designing and facilitating group strategy events and helping businesses develop and implement innovative, customer led solutions.

Nick works with major companies (FTSE 100, Fortune 500) ranging from investment banking to the music sector and from IT to pharmaceuticals and has extensive involvement in professional services.

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Brian Hawkins

Brian joined raising the bar as a partner in April 2005, and since then has been part of our core delivery team working with our clients on programmes, both designing and delivering the training.

Before that he was the most senior of the Account Directors at Ernst & Young having worked with the firm for 10 years.

He had a team of 28 sales and marketing professionals working for him covering Scotland and the north of England. His personal clients included Damovo, Thus Plc, iSoft Plc, MyTravel and Kwik Fit. He was a member of the national sales board of Ernst & Young UK and a member of the regional management board.

His sales role was based around sales coaching and facilitation, enabling Ernst & Young teams to work with client teams creating solutions to complex issues and challenges.

Before joining Ernst & Young he worked for TMI, the largest management-training organisation in Europe. A graduate of Edinburgh University, Brian is a certified NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) Practitioner.

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Scott Fewin

Scott joined raising the bar in 2010 to focus on our global clients with businesses in the Americas and the Middle East. He formerly was a First Vice President with Merrill Lynch in London having spent over 15 years establishing, developing and managing private banking relationships with ultra high net worth individuals, family offices and small-mid size institutions in Europe and the Middle East.

Scott’s brings a diverse background to raising the bar. After graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point, he spent 6 years in the US Army as an infantry officer. Scott garnered vast leadership experience in small-mid size units with front-line assignments in the 24th Infantry Division, at the 1st Ranger Battalion, and with the 2nd Infantry Division in Korea.

Upon leaving the Army, Scott pursued a life of working internationally by becoming a Foreign Service Officer with the US Department of State. He travelled extensively during his five years as a Foreign Service Office gaining a unique perspective on US economic, political and commercial issues. Eventually, Scott was assigned to the Consulate General in Dubai as the Economic/Commercial Attaché. After completing his assignment in the UAE, he decided it was time to make a career change and he joined Merrill Lynch’s Dubai offices in 1994.

Scott enjoyed great success as a financial advisor while at Merrill Lynch, consistently ranking in the top 5% among peers (annual revenues and assets under management) within a firm of over 16,000 financial advisors worldwide. Scott spent 11 years based in the Middle East before moving to the UK where he continued growing his private banking business for a further 6 years before returning to the US in late 2009.

Scott brings to raising the bar a wealth of leadership and management experience in culturally and functionally diverse work environments. He certainly has demonstrated over his 20+ years of international business and sales experience, primarily in emerging market economies, the importance of building and nurturing long-term client relationships within multi-national markets.

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Mike Jones

Mike has more than 20 years experience of selling professional services.

A Psychology graduate of the University of Western Australia, Mike has held senior sales and marketing roles in some of the leading professional services firms including Zurich, St James's Place Capital and Tite & Lewis.

He was also sales director of Ernst & Young before going on to become founder of Intrinsic Values Limited. Mike has led many assignments and is a recognised leader in the field of sales and business development. He was the world's first law firm Sales Director and has built a reputation as one of the most influential consultants in the professional sector. Mike is a well-known conference speaker and has published a number of articles on selling professional services.

Mike has worked with the raising the bar team for many years, having first worked alongside the founders at Ernst & Young in the UK. Mike is a true leader in the field of sales and business development and adds real depth to our professional services expertise, having led significant training and consulting projects for a large number of the world’s biggest law firms and accounting firms.

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Tracy Bartley

Tracy is a coach, trainer and consultant and works as an associate with raising the bar. She has worked extensively across financial sectors including retail and commercial banking and FSA regulated organisations.

Tracy’s prior career was mostly in the financial services sector and she has over 20 years experience in sales and managing sales teams to excel. She has worked in various divisions of major banking groups and she was regularly the top sales performer and went on lead both retail and FSA regulated sales teams.

Tracy has been responsible for the development of a highly successful Business Development division, embedding new sales management practises and ensuring consistent improvement through her coaching and mentoring programmes. Throughout her career she was known for leveraging cross fertilisation between divisions resulting in increased revenue from previously untapped income streams.

Tracy has a Masters Degree in Executive Coaching and her major areas of expertise include change, leadership and executive coaching, and improving staff engagement through tried and tested methodology. Her strength lies in helping clients make strategies happen.

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Jessica Warman

Jessica joined raising the bar at it’s inception in 2002 and provides full back-up and support to the raising the bar team. She handles day-to-day queries and enquiries and will very often be your first point of contact when calling the raising the bar office.

Jessica will also be your raising the bar contact for training course and coaching bookings with overall diary management for both Nick and Brian and our associates worldwide. Through liaison with your administrators, she will ensure that all the logistics and specified materials for each of the programmes are correct and ensure that the delivery of the programme/s conform to the agreed contract detail. Following the delivery of coaching and training, Jessica will then issue the appropriate invoice to you and will liaise with your team regarding payments.

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