Board of Directors

All our work is overseen by a Board of Directors, who make key decisions around all aspects of the important work that's carried out. They each have over 20 years successful, first-hand experience of delivering customer experience, large-scale change, and leadership development programmes.

Nick Fawcett is an award-winning customer

experience specialist, leader, consultant & coach

Nick started his working career with 12 years in retail leadership at Tesco, firstly as a senior operational manager in stores and across regions. He then moved into central strategic and project roles in marketing – leading company-wide customer change projects, including Living Service. This was a cultural transformation programme for all 250,000 staff bringing in new world food ranges, redesigning the Express stores experience, driving innovation in core own brands and, pleasantly, a whole programme designed to make Tesco a more fun place to work and shop!

Since then, as a director for 15 years with Impact Innovation, Nick has successfully worked with many leading organisations, building and introducing new propositions and customer experiences whilst developing leaders at all levels and teams throughout. Happy clients include the NHS, John Lewis and Waitrose, O2, Ibis and Mercure Hotels, Yorkshire Water and New Look to name but a few. Through this work, he has won numerous awards, the most recent being The Institute for Customer Service 2019 Award for Best Customer Experience Strategy. Nick is the co-author of the Dangerous Books series published by Bloomsbury – the Dangerous Guide to Customer Service and the Dangerous Guide to Innovation Leadership (shortlisted for a CMI Management Gold award). Nick also recently developed the Positive and Productive Patient Experience Programme, which is a digital learning resource available to healthcare staff who want to develop their interrelational skills in a healthcare setting.

He is a passionate and enthusiastic trail runner, squash player, football fan, general lover of sports and activity, an amateur rock star and family man!

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Amanda Hickey is a coach and a people & change specialist

Amanda has spent most of her career in the retail sector, working for both large and small organisations, with a strong focus on delivering an excellent customer experience. She has worked in various roles such as buying, category management, retail operations, customer experience, change management, and more recently, the People Team.

Amanda is passionate about helping individuals and organisations find solutions that meet their needs. She is an experienced leader, who is authentic and focused on delivering results.

Nearly five years ago, Amanda trained as a coach and found a fulfilling role that she loves. She considers it a privilege to work with people to help create the environment for them to be creative and resourceful.

Amanda lives in Hertfordshire with her three children and enjoys spending time with her family and friends.

Simon Gardner is an innovation, customer propositions and teamworking specialist, consultant & coach

Simon began his career in product design and innovation for a multinational automotive and aerospace manufacturing organisation. As part of the internal best practice and development unit, he worked with different areas of the business to improve their approach to developing new products and across organisation collaboration.

Simon then moved into consulting, working with organisations to improve how they design and develop new services and improve their customer experiences. He has a wide range of expertise, from strategy development right through to implementation. Over this time, he has worked with a wide range of organisations including the BBC, John Lewis, NHS Institute, O2, RAC, Sainsbury’s, the NHS, Unilever, Waitrose, and Yorkshire Water – working across the UK, Europe, and the Americas.

He is the co-author of the Dangerous Books series published by Bloomsbury – the Dangerous Guide to Innovation Leadership (shortlisted for a CMI Management Gold award). He is also a fellow of the RSA, has a PhD and degree in Product Design.

Simon has a passion for football but is now attempting to learn to trail run with the aid of his local running club and rediscover rock climbing with his daughter. He also enjoys recreational scuba diving.

Philip Davis is an award-winning large-scale change specialist, leadership development expert, consultant & coach

With a degree in Mechanical Engineering, Philip started his career as a Design Engineer and then moved into engineering management. After a number of years, he began to find he was more interested in the re-design of organisations and improving how they worked.

Since switching careers over 25 years ago, and with an MBA under his belt, Philip has now built up vast experience in the design and implementation of service transformation and organisational development programmes. He has created award-winning customer service experiences for organisations in the retail, hospitality, engineering, health and charity sectors across the UK, Europe, North America and India. Philip has a deep specialism in Leading for Large Scale Change and was instrumental in the creation and delivery of the Academy of Large Scale Change for the NHS.

Philip is the co-author of the Dangerous Books series published by Bloomsbury – the Dangerous Guide to Customer Service and the Dangerous Guide to Innovation Leadership. Phil is also an accomplished presenter, including TEDx talks on Extreme Creativity. Recently, Philip served as an MBA advisory board member at Nottingham Trent Business School for 3 years.

Philip is an enthusiastic volunteer coach in both youth football and rugby.