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 llp 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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Paul O'Donnell

Having graduated with honours from Newcastle university in 1980, Paul spent three years with Coopers and Lybrand (now PWC) before commencing what was to become 25 years continuous involvement in the Private Wealth Management industry. During this period Paul not only established, grew and successfully sold his own stockbroking business, but also went on to hold senior leadership positions with Brewin Dolphin, UBS Wealth Management, and EFG Private Bank in London.

In 2008, Paul decided to "flip the coin" and go independent with his own performance consultancy, adding a professional coaching qualification (EMCC* accredited executive coach qualification from The School of Coaching in London) to the significant sales and business growth skills he had developed in the wealth management arena. Paul also brings his substantial sporting history to this new role, drawing on his experience as both as a coach and player at the highest level (where he was selected to represent his country, Ireland). He now works with organisations and individuals in helping them achieve the performance they seek. 

Paul has known and worked closely with raising the bar llp since 2001 whilst at UBS, and brings to us his recent experience of senior leadership and change management challenges  in a multinational bank, as well as practical performance coaching application within such organisations and in sport.

* European Mentoring and Coaching Council

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Dorothea Ciniglio

Dorothea brings to her executive coaching experience in development of individuals and teams from her personnel management background.  Using psychometric techniques (which is her area of expertise at raising the bar llp), to make assessments, she helps clients implement the results in the workplace in industries as varied as retail, brewing, finance and chemicals.

For the past 11 years, she has been a freelance consultant and coach, constantly developing and implementing psychometric measures and assessments, 360 reviews, identifying potential senior management material. She facilitates team workshops at Director level, provides career counselling and delivers training in self-marketing, presentation skills and coping with change.

As well as being a Certified NLP Master Practitioner, Dorothea has an MA in Human Resource Management and she is also a tutor at Cranfield University lecturing the 'Managing Personal Effectiveness' module of the MBA Programme.

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Jessica Warman

Jessica joined raising the bar llp at it’s inception in 2002 and provides full back-up and support to the raising the bar llp 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 llp office.

Jessica will also be your raising the bar llp 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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