About us

Founder and Behavioural Strategist

About Lily:

Lily is an ex-BBC Journalist, a Behavioural Strategist & Leadership Consultant, and the founder of Morgan James Consulting. She has worked with over 2500 businesses, from start-ups to multi-nationals, delivering executive coaching, bespoke leadership and management programmes whilst creating highly effective leaders who can build successful businesses and develop their best assets – the people that work with them and for them. Lily designs and delivers bespoke programmes for a wide range of clients and loves to work with an exceptional pool of facilitators who are curious and bring interesting concepts and practical ideas to Morgan James’ development programmes, helping delegates to really step outside of their comfort zones and build stronger, values led businesses. Lily has designed and delivers The Exceptional Non-Exec Director Programme for Leeds University. As a working NED for 3 companies, Lily focuses on the 3 agendas of leadership: (Strategic, Emotional and Behavioural) to build exceptional boards who can deliver high growth and build cultures where every member of staff feels inspired and valued.

She also delivers elements of the MBA Programmes at Liverpool University and The Faculty of Business and Law for MMU in Manchester. Lily is: the founder of Frontline, a project which trains wounded ex-servicemen to tear up their life limiting scripts and create better futures; a founding member of Act4Africa, a charity that has provided HIV prevention education and Women’s Empowerment Programmes in Uganda and a trustee for Press Red, a charity that combats abuse against women and girls in all its forms. To raise funds and awareness for her chosen charities she has completed a 220-mile bike ride across England, overcome her fear of heights to complete a wing walk and, most recently, swam the distance of the English Channel (21 miles) at her local pool to fund emergency food parcels for starving adolescent mums who have been hugely impacted by Covid in Uganda. During Covid, Lily set up a voluntary project called Cakes of Kindness, during which she recruited a team of voluntary bakers. Collectively they baked and delivered 16,000 cakes to NHS staff and vulnerable people. Lily has a son Max and two Ugandan children, Conice, and Tony whom she has supported since they were orphaned 15 years ago. She and her husband, Michael, love to bike and swim. They need to keep moving to counteract the impact of having so much homemade cake in the kitchen!

Executive assistant

About Rachel:

Rachel started off her working life as a PA at an executive recruitment company in Manchester, before taking a role first as office manager and then as Corporate Fundraising Executive at Marie Curie Cancer Care, where she first met Lily.  Her exceptional organisational and project management skills were crucial to building the charity’s reputation for delivering major corporate fundraising campaigns with national brands including: Laura Ashley; BAe Systems; Morrisons Supermarkets and Barclays Bank. Her passion for working in the charity sector and her interest in helping developing world countries that have been decimated by war led Rachel to  take on a project coordinator role at the Manchester based international NGO Mines Advisory Group (MAG). Here, she supported and coordinated landmine clearance projects overseas. An analytical thinker with an eye for detail, Rachel was recruited as the North West Regional Coordinator for BBC Children in Need, taking responsibility for managing the grant making programme across the region.  She then became a Grants Assessor for the charity where she was responsible for analysing all aspects of project applications from charities and public organisations and making recommendations for funding from the charity.

Before joining Morgan James, Rachel added a new string to her bow, working in finance as a Bursar in a large and diverse primary school in Hanley, Stoke-on Trent. Rachel re-joined Lily at Morgan James in 2015 and is the beating heart of the office, responsible for: coordinating all coaching and training programmes; providing support to the associate team; managing the finances and,  “….paying attention to the detail to make sure that everything runs smoothly – she is literally my right and left-hand woman,” says Lily. When Rachel is not at work or involved in her numerous family commitments, Rachel can be found running, swimming, practising yoga, walking or shopping!

Growth partner

Brand strategist

Executive and career coach

Bernie started her career as a lawyer but discovered fairly early on that it was not the right path so transitioned into talent resourcing & recruitment, becoming Director of a niche consultancy specialising in recruiting and headhunting for the UK’s top 100 law firms. She gained a postgraduate in Executive Coaching and opened her coaching consultancy coaching lawyers and other professionals navigating change and challenge. Her interests shifted to the education sector, retained by universities to support their law and business students, graduates and postgraduates and was recruited onto the panel of coaches supporting academic and professional staff.

Bernie currently leads the Career & Leadership Development Programme for MBAs at ULMS, supporting an ambitious community of global emerging leaders.  Bernie loves working with clients at all career stages, from recent graduates to professionals exploring career change, promotion or finding purpose in retirement. Bernie has a Law degree from University of Birmingham, is a qualified Solicitor (non-practising), a qualified Coach and is accredited for MBTI and Insights psychometric profiling.

Leadership and performance consultant

Leadership development and organisational change specialist

About Ann:

Ann has a PhD in Organisational Transformation from Loughborough University and has a passion for supporting businesses and individuals to achieve their full potential. With 25 years’ experience in business development, consultancy, executive coaching and leadership development, Ann has worked with hundreds of small and medium sized businesses across all sectors and many large corporates, blue chip companies and social enterprises. Ann currently works in partnership with a number of organisations including Inventya, the Northern Automotive Alliance (NAA) and Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). Projects include: Programme Scaleup Specialist supporting Change Management and Organisational Development guidance for Inventya; Programme Leader for the Made Smarter Leadership Programme and delivery of content sessions on the Small Business Management Programme for MMU and the delivery of coaching and action learning sets for the Peer Networking Programme on behalf of the Northern Automotive Alliance. In recent years, Ann has worked with Bentley Motors and developed and delivered highly successful leadership programmes for both senior and middle managers for their global retailer network. For more detail on Ann’s experience and client endorsements please check out her LinkedIn profile. When not working with businesses, Ann has three grown up children and four grandchildren to keep her busy. She has a passion for travel and likes to visit two of her daughters based in Australia and Dubai as often as she can.

Communications specialist

About Jess:

Jess is a communications professional with extensive experience in journalism, broadcasting, live events, film-making, production, and training. Jess has had an international career, including several years in Hong Kong, where she was a reporter for the South China Morning Post, and in the US, where she reported and produced for radio and television at NBC and ABC in California. Returning to the UK, she worked for GMTV as a senior producer and live output editor, until the BBC poached her to work on Breakfast. She went to Thailand after the Boxing Day Tsunami and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and enjoyed a memorable road trip in America for the US elections with the legendary presenter Bill Turnbull. Jess became an assistant editor for Breakfast, managing a team of producers, reporters and presenters and outputting the three hour live daily show. She also produced live events for the BBC on themes including leadership, sustainability and digital shortform, and lead classroom-based learning to journalists transitioning to a new broadcast system. After working in marketing and comms for a year, Jess became a communications consultant to help people and businesses tell the stories that journalists and their audiences really want to hear. “I worked with Jess for more than ten years at BBC News. She has a great editorial brain, a real eye for a story and a creative determination to make things happen in an engaging way. She’s also kind, down to earth and great fun to work with.” Graham Satchell, BBC correspondent

Head of creativity, innovation and marketing

About Mark:

Graduating from Oxford with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Mark Vigil has been a professional marketer for over 15 years working in both agency and client-side roles. Whilst running his own successful agency, Big Sound Marketing for the past 11 years, he has also delivered workshops on innovation, creativity, marketing and sales strategy for Morgan James Consulting for the past 6 years. Mark originally met Lily when he was a delegate on the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business programme in 2016. She recognised his outstanding talent, empathy and ability to engage with any audience and soon invited him to join the Morgan James team of experts.

Mark is also a highly accomplished comic and performer, having delivered improvised comedy everywhere from Leicester to Seoul! He is a member of two award nominated improvised comedy groups; The Same Faces and Rhymes Against Humanity. He has also trained with the world-famous comedy school The Second City. As a writer, Mark is a regular contributor to online satirical show British Rationals and has written for BBC Radio 4 Extra’s Newjack.

Senior associate & creative lead

About Paul:

Paul is the director of a global network of world-class coaches and facilitators. He is also an inspiring and award-winning consultant, who specialises in influence, high performance and leadership. Over the last 24 years, he has worked with over 100 of the world’s leading companies, and is currently a faculty member on three Leadership programmes. Most recently he’s been working with the Global Leadership Team for Technology at a leading bank, the board of directors at a global IT provider, as well as delivering intensive leadership training in the UK, Europe and the Far East. His career has spanned 37 years, first as an International gymnast, then as a successful actor (West End), next as a writer (BBC radio/TV & West End) and finally as a trainer and coach. This variety informs his approach, and clients typically describe his work as original, effective, inspiring and fun. Past and current clients include: Novartis, Roche, Barclays, Zurich, Fujitsu, Unilever, Deutsche Bank, Deloitte, GlaxoSmithKline, BP, KPMG, Nexen, EY, Dutch Railways, TNT, PWC, Wyndhams, Diageo, Zurich Finance, Sky, O2, RBS, Prudential, Shell and British Airway.

Behavioural psychologist

About Stephanie:

Over the past two decades Stephanie has gained an unsurpassed reputation for designing and delivering interventions for top-performing teams in various settings, and is recognised as one of the UK’s leading voices in happiness and engagement in organisations. She is one of the nations most talked about communications consultants, specialising in the psychology of humour and motivation. She has worked on innovative projects and events in the private and public sector. Stephanie’s creative and rounded approach to: engagement, creating the right culture, happiness at work, continued development, culture change and customer loyalty, drives success not only with the organisations she works with, but at Morgan James Consulting too. Stephanie’s unique combination as an award-winning stand-up comedian and her expertise and knowledge in psychology and business, makes her one of the most sought-after speakers on the business and after-dinner circuit.  She also uses her knowledge to provide consultancy programmes for some of the top exec teams in the country, working with well-known blue-chip organisations and government parties. In 2016 Stephanie was invited to the International Positive Psychology and Education conference in Dallas to speak alongside Dr Martin Seligman and Sean Achor. On top of her busy schedule, Stephanie is often asked to contribute to popular television programmes, and is renowned as ITN News’ expert in humour, happiness and health. She regularly contributes to BBC’s Heaven & Earth and is a regular on BBC Radio.  Her book ‘Laughology, The Science of Laughter to Improve Your Life’ has received excellent reviews on Amazon and The Guardian book site.

Project and program management professional

Senior associate and behavioural specialist

About Elizabeth

Elizabeth is an organisational development specialist, trainer and coach with over 30 years of experience helping organisations improve performance through the development of their people and processes. Elizabeth has experience as a business owner who has worked with SMEs and large organisations Elizabeth is a highly enthusiastic and energetic individual who enjoys the challenge of strategically assisting clients to grow and develop. She has a strong passion for working with people to enable them to become high performers that deliver business results. Having a keen interest in psychology and how conversational change can motivate and encourage people to grow, has led Elizabeth to explore and search for effective tools and frameworks to increase awareness, understanding and facilitate change. This passion has led her to become an NLP Trainer qualified in Belbin and MBTI psychometrics. Elizabeth is not afraid to incorporate other development techniques from hypnosis, Huna, Alexander Technique, Aikido and Temperament/Trait Masks in her work. Elizabeth is a founding member of the International Network for Human-Linguistic Psychology. She has designed and delivered a wide variety of bespoke consultancy and behavioural based training interventions within a range of industries and feels at home working with organisations who want to:

• Develop the skills, attitudes and capabilities of employees
• Benefit from developing high performing and interdependent teams
• Move through organizational transition or change
• Implement graduate, management and leadership development programmes
• Improve the utilisation of their performance management processes
• Facilitate individual, group and organisational alignment
• Understand and improve collaborative working
• Improve working in an alliance environment
• Achieve benefit realisation of culture change projects
• Maximise engagement, ownership and contribution of employees

To relax, Elizabeth likes to stretch more than her mind through yoga and enjoys singing in a local choir. She enjoys walking and is always up for a paddle in the sea.

Creative advisor and business actor

About Matt:

Matt is a business actor with a reputation for conveying great depth of character and authenticity in a wide range of role plays and ‘Goldfish bowl’ scenarios that we deliver as part of our communication and people management workshops. He is a firm favourite on the Goldman Sachs business growth programme (we deliver the leadership and people management modules) and is able to deliver convincing characters based on either real life experiences or specific psychometric profiles. The experience of our business actor team enables our clients to develop a greater understanding of their own behavioural weaknesses, how to positively influence others, develop a more flexible communication style and connect with those who have different personality preferences. Matt has worked both the public and private sectors over the past 8 years, using his performance skills in various training, development and assessment days for a wide variety of companies including Waterstones, Wickes, NHS, British Library, British Gas, Asda, LV Insurance, BBC, HBOS and many more. Matt has a First-Class BA (Hons) degree in Performance and studied screen acting in the US at New York Film Academy. Since graduating he has performed on stage, TV, film and even provided a variety of voices for the Sony Playstation video game ‘When Vikings Attack’ last year. You may have recently seen him on adverts for the Co-op and Bavaria Beer. He most recently appeared in the feature film ‘Rough Cut’, which was released in the UK in December and was screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. If you would like to book Matt, or discuss utilising any of our actors or motivational speakers at your events (of find out about how we can work with you to develop workshops and programmes to help your team to increase self-awareness and communicate more effectively), please fill in the enquiry form or call +44 (0)1606 883383.