Executive Coaching & Talent Consultancy

Developing leaders. Building the teams that hire them.

Two complementary services for organisations serious about their senior talent — developing the leaders they have, and building the capability to hire the ones they need.

01 Corporate Leadership Coaching → 02 Executive Talent Consultancy →
Kate Schofield

The organisations that win on talent develop their leaders deliberately — and hire with the rigour of a search firm, from the inside.

Global Head of Executive Recruiting — Zalando SE
EMEA Leadership Recruiter — Google
Researcher, CFO Practice — Odgers Berndtson
ICF-accredited coach · Brown University
15+Years in Executive Recruiting
500+Executive Hires
£M+Saved in Agency Fees
ICFAccredited · Brown University
01
For Organisations Service One
Corporate Leadership
Coaching

Senior leaders carry disproportionate weight. Their decisions shape culture, team performance, and business outcomes across entire functions. And yet most organisations invest heavily in talent below leadership level — leaving their most influential people to navigate their greatest challenges alone.

Delivered individually. Typically four to six months. Structured around the leader's real challenges, live decisions, and the specific shifts — in mindset, behaviour, or positioning — that will deliver the greatest leverage for their role.

Discuss Your Needs

This is not off-the-shelf leadership development. It is a rigorous, confidential partnership — with measurable progress assessed throughout and outcomes agreed in advance.

On the approach

Bespoke 1:1 coaching for Director, VP, and C-suite leaders — designed around your organisation's objectives, not a generic framework. Every engagement begins with a stakeholder alignment session to ensure coaching serves both the individual and the business.

When Organisations Work With Us
i
New Leader Onboarding
A recently appointed executive navigating the critical first 90–180 days. Building authority, relationships, and momentum at pace — where the cost of a slow start is highest.
ii
Leadership Transition
A leader stepping up in scope where the shift is as much behavioural as technical. The skills that got them here will not automatically get them there.
iii
High-Potential Development
A future leader identified in succession planning — given the depth of development that internal programmes rarely provide, and a reason to stay.
iv
Performance & Retention
A valued leader in a period of friction. Coaching that works on the real problem, not the presenting one.
Programme Structure
1
Weeks 1–2
Discovery
Senior stakeholder briefing. Align coaching objectives with business goals and define success metrics upfront.
2
Month 1
Foundation
90-minute diagnostic. Surface patterns, blockers, and the two or three shifts that will move the needle most.
3
Months 2–4
Coaching
Structured sessions applied to live challenges. Behaviours shift and ripple outward into teams and decisions.
4
Final Month
Review
Closing review with sponsoring leader or HR. Outcomes assessed against agreed metrics. Next priorities identified.

Developing leaders is one side of the equation. Hiring them well — without paying a third of their salary to an agency — is the other.

02
For Businesses Service Two
Executive Talent
Consultancy

Most businesses default to executive search agencies for senior hiring — not because it's the best approach, but because they've never built the internal capability. A 25–35% fee on every appointment. A process you don't control. A dependency that grows every year.

I work with businesses to build the internal executive recruiting capability that ends that cycle — developing your team to run searches with genuine rigour, market knowledge, and the candidate experience senior hiring demands.

Start with the Audit

Not anti-agency. Genuinely neutral. Sometimes an agency is the right call — and uniquely, I can tell you when that is, which ones are best for your brief, and how to get full value from the relationship.

"I've sat on every side of this market — agency, client, and in-house function builder. That perspective is the difference."

56%
Diversity & Inclusion

Diversity is not a bolt-on. It is built into how I approach every search — from how briefs are written and where candidates are sourced, to how success profiles are defined and interviews structured. 56% of executive hires made at Zalando were diverse, with a deliberate focus on building leadership teams that reflect the breadth of the businesses they serve.

Building internal capability is also an opportunity to hardwire inclusive practice into your process from the ground up — not retrofit it later.

The Credentials Behind the Advice
Odgers Berndtson
Researcher, CFO Practice
Started career in executive search. Knows exactly what agencies do, what the margin is, and where the value is — and isn't — in the model.
Google
EMEA Leadership Recruiter
Built internal engineering leadership hiring from scratch across EMEA. Was the client paying agency fees — then made them unnecessary.
Zalando SE
Global Head of Executive Recruiting
Built the executive recruiting function near-from-scratch. Scaled to cover Director through C-suite across EMEA.
Three Ways to Engage
01
The Agency Dependency Audit
A standalone diagnostic. I assess your senior hiring landscape, identify what could be handled internally, and deliver a clear business case and practical roadmap. The natural starting point.
Defined scope · Fixed fee
02
Executive Recruiting Function Build
For businesses untested at VP and C-suite level. I design the structure, build the processes and interview frameworks, and develop your recruiters to execute executive searches with genuine rigour.
Project-based · Defined outcomes
03
Ongoing Strategic Advisory
A retained arrangement. I advise on individual searches, keep your team sharp on market intelligence, and guide you on when and how to use agencies — and which ones are actually worth the fee.
Retained · Flexible scope
The compounding case for internal capability
Save £300k+

A business making 8–10 senior hires per year at £150k+ is spending £350–450k annually on agency fees. Building internal capability systematically reduces that cost — and the saving compounds every year.

With internal capability Agency-only model
Culture knowledge built in
Briefed fresh every search
Expertise compounds year on year
No knowledge transfer
Full process ownership
Speed incentives misaligned
Know when agencies add real value
No internal benchmark
Saving grows every year
Cost resets after every hire
Let's talk

Ready to start?

Let's have the conversation.

A 30-minute call. No pitch, no obligation — just a straightforward conversation about where your organisation is and whether there's a way to work together.

Request a Call Send a Message

All enquiries treated in confidence · Typical response within 24 hours