Team

Richard Thornton

Associate

I have been a learning and development professional for 18 years, having started my career in sales and worked my way up to area management. I always felt that helping people to grow and develop was my first love, so L & D seemed like a natural progression!

Over the years I have been responsible for designing and delivering a range of successful learning interventions at leadership, management, graduate and apprenticeship levels.

These workshops and programmes have focussed on skills such as building client and stakeholder relationships, improving teamwork, enhancing management and leadership skills to ILM accredited levels, and helping graduates and apprentices to become successful in the working world.

I love travel and experiencing new cultures, so I feel lucky to have been able to work not only around the UK, but also in North and Central America, across Europe and in the Middle East. I feel at home in a variety of sectors, including banking, insurance, regulation, professional services, engineering, health care and retail.

I am also a qualified coach and an accredited practitioner for the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), “PRISM” (neuroscience) and “Strengthscope” tools.

Marie Guest

Associate

Marie is senior HR generalist and trainer with almost 20 years’ experience across a range of sectors from premium brands, legal, FMCG, software development and manufacturing. A fellow of the CIPD, with an MA in Personnel and Development, Marie specialises in offering bespoke HR and training consultancy which is results focussed and sustainable. She embraces the challenge of balancing best practice with organisational context to deliver commercial value. Marie is passionate about working with clients to develop their management skills and personal effectiveness through practical one to one coaching or classroom based group delivery.

Shirine Vincent

Director

I am one of the founding Directors of the business.  My background is as an HR and L&D generalist, working predominantly in the IT and financial services sectors.  Before starting the business with Rob and Paul, I ran my own HR consulting business, providing advice and support on employment matters to businesses of all sizes.  Within BiteSize Learning, I am the lead trainer on Diversity, Inclusion and Unconscious Bias, Employment Law for Managers, Recruitment Interviewing and Performance Management.  I take great pleasure in being part of the training design team and training our associate trainers to deliver our short courses.  Additionally, I am the lead for Employment Matters, our HR consulting stream, where I have gained a reputation for providing practical commercial solutions to our clients.  You can reach me on 0771 978 4171.

Jake O’Gorman

Associate

Jake has a track record in helping corporate executives and teams pitch and present confidently without notes, pass professional qualifications in less time and remember key information when networking.

He has represented England at the World Memory Championships multiple times, in 2015 winning the MSO Memory World Cup. In addition to competing in the Creative Thinking World Championships, in August 2016 he achieved the title of ‘International Master’ within the Mind Sport Olympiad.

Jake has featured in many national newspapers including The Times, The Telegraph and The Sun and has contributed to several TV and Radio documentaries on the art and science of memory, most recently ITV’s ‘How to Remember Everything’.

Alison Flashman

Administration Manager

Alison Flashman has been our Administration Manager since 2012. She is responsible for all bookings and scheduling as well as the day to day running of our office. Alison has over 20 years of administrative and office management experience  and has worked in both local and central government, with 14 years spent running the Parliamentary Office for a Cabinet Minister.

Alison is our main contact for bookings and can be reached directly at: [email protected]

Paul Hodder

Director

Founding the Company with Rob and Shirine remains one of the best things I have done, despite previously had an enjoyable and successful career in HR and Training.  I worked as Head of HR for large Companies in both the UK and America and ran a Corporate University in Chicago. Within BiteSize Learning, I take responsibility for programme design, and still enjoy facilitating our programmes. I am also lead for Customised Development, our bespoke training and development solutions stream. I have a fascination with how organisations manage change, a strong belief in the value of good people management, and a passion for providing tools, techniques and thinking that will help individuals to take control of those challenges currently outside their comfort zones. You can call me on 07963 451260.

John Fusco

Training Design and Delivery Specilaist

I became a trainer after attending a lot of long, dull training courses in my corporate career!  They prompted me to think “there must be better, more fun and engaging ways to learn than this”, and my ethos as a trainer is to make the time I spend with my participants so useful, enjoyable and memorable that it ‘flies by’.

My career successes in leading large teams to deliver outstanding business results are reflected in my approach to training. I take time to understand clients and build strong working relationships with people at all levels in an organisation. I specialise in devising and delivering pragmatic and memorable training and development programmes that are highly participative and allow delegates to see a clear link between the content and achievement of their commercial goals.

As a Yorkshireman, I tend to have a very straightforward view of life and will ‘cut to the chase’ when explaining things. If I could choose a middle name for myself it would be ‘Simple’ – as in ‘clear and easy to understand’ rather than ‘stupid’! Life is already complicated enough without a trainer making it more so for his audience.

Outside of work, my passions are travel, the theatre and music of all types. I volunteer as a Presenter for the local hospital radio station in York and also act as voluntary guide for visitors to the city.

Rob Conolly

Director

Rob is a learning and development consultant who specialises in helping individuals and teams successfully implement behaviour change, and maximise potential. He is a founding Director of BiteSize Learning. He brings over 17 years’ experience operating at a senior level in the competitive and fast moving insurance sector and exceptional organisational and leadership ability, supported by high levels of energy and persuasive interpersonal skills. He has created and led diverse teams of learning and development specialists in a large multinational and coached business owners on business development and managing and implementing change. Rob is a member of the PFS and CIPD.

Rie Eichmann

Associate

Rie specialises in intercultural training for international teams and executives. Her training style is very informative and highly engaging. Rie has over 10 years of international business experience in various industries including hospitality, higher education, e-commerce, and the IT industry. She has managed a team and worked in international environments with over 20 nationalities. With Rie’s work abroad and extensive travelling, she knows what the challenges will be for global managers working in different cultural environments and managing people from different countries. She shares several scenarios and examples to help delegates build their personal strategies to overcome cultural challenges. She is a certified culture trainer and NLP trainer.

Janice Benning

Associate

Gill Parkin

Associate

Gill has worked in the field of strategic learning and development for almost twenty years. She has worked in partnership with many major organisations across a range of business sectors, both within the UK and internationally. Gill has extensive leadership experience, particularly in the field of financial services and professional services. She is adept at identifying opportunities for improvement, and working closely with clients to design and deliver learning and development programmes to achieve strategic aims and support organisational change.

She is commercially aware and focused on creating real and lasting benefits. Skilled at helping people to change their behaviours, she uses her skills in facilitation and coaching to help individuals and teams develop their own blueprints for successful change. Many clients credit her with helping them to find new ways of thinking and approaching situations to boost performance. They also appreciate her ability to combine challenge and enjoyment for stimulating, memorable learning experiences.

Mark Willis

Associate

Mark is a skilled L&D trainer with a special interest in Management and People skills delivery. He has a 30-year career history in Financial Services, with four major banks: Barclays, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase and Citi. In 1998 Mark made a career transition within banking to the Learning space, providing L&D support to Operations and Global Functions businesses across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Mark is an experienced professional coach with Associate Certified Coach credentials awarded by the International Coach Federation.

Kate Whitlock

Associate

Kate is CIPD accredited coach and mentor with considerable experience of implementing, managing and evaluating coaching and mentoring schemes. Kate strives for flexibility in her coaching style, drawing from a range of approaches to suit individual requirements. Working towards a defined goal, sessions may simply consist of a focussed conversation, or include the use of models and exercises to develop thinking and enhance learning.

Lucy Limb

Marketing manager

I am marketing manager at Shiparo with responsibility for marketing communications and champion for all things digital and social. My role is to communicate, as widely as possible, our value proposition: we help both people and businesses improve performance. A key part of my role is understanding and keeping up to date with our clients’ needs, ensuring we exceed them and improve their experience working with us. I enjoy the challenge of devising ways to communicate with our audiences whether through social media or traditional methods and the opportunity to innovate. My background is in marketing and business development in the not for profit and education sectors.

Rachel Hankey

Associate

Rachel is a successful actress with a portfolio that includes stage productions of Shakespeare and TVshows The Bill and Causality. She has extensive experience of helping people to become effective at public speaking and make a positive impact by applying techniques used in the acting profession. Rachel provides practical advice on how to: engage with an audience; make a ‘dry’ subject interesting; overcome nerves and ensure that your true message gets across. Her work ranges from giving teachers the confidence to control a class of teenagers, CEOs to deliver their annual results to shareholders, through to helping insurance brokers make the perfect pitch.

Jonathan Geard-Beney

Associate

Jonathan’s wealth of experience in learning and development spans over 27 years and includes employers and clients from many household names; in retail, finance, utilities and manufacturing. He is a qualified and experienced NLP trainer and coach (ICF and AC member) who uses many aspects of NLP and Accelerated Learning to facilitate fun and rapid learning. Jonathan is an Associateof CIPD and sits on the local committee. In all his work, he brings enthusiasm, flexibility and a passion for helping people transform themselves through learning.

Ruth Fraser

Associate

Ruth is an Executive and Leadership coach. Prior to establishing her coaching practice in 2008, she worked in the corporate and voluntary sectors for over 25 years. Including a career in the financial sector, HR Director with a Global Humanitarian organisation and Board Trustee. She specialised in people and organisational development, leadership, culture, behaviour change, learning and development. Ruth has over 10 years’ experience as a senior leader, working with a wide range of individuals in a variety of situations. She trained with Coaches Training Institute & Academy of Coaching Excellence and is a member of the Association for Coaching. Ruth coaches senior leaders across sectors, including corporate, private and voluntary.

Flora Mac Donald

Associate

Flora Mac Donald has over 17 years’ commercial experience with a proven track record as an executive coach and facilitator in the field of Talent Management.  Flora has worked with clients at every level of seniority, from Board level to emerging talent. Her experience covers a broad range of industry sectors and organisations, including UK programmes with FTSE 100 companies and internationally based assignments with multinationals.

Flora is highly experienced in the field of people development, team building, change management and career progression. Flora worked as a consultant in both Australia and London for a global management consultancy. She has contributed to articles on coaching and talent management in The Guardian, The Evening Standard and Executive Grapevine.

Ruth Benson

Associate

Ruth is an experienced and versatile consultant who has been designing, leading and facilitating training programmes and experiential workshops in the field of personal and organisational development since 1990. She has also worked extensively as an executive coach. Ruth gained her knowledge of management psychology working as an independent development consultant for eight years, before joining one of the UK’s largest Risk Management and Human Capital Consulting companies in their Culture Change division. She has completed courses in Transpersonal Psychotherapy and Transpersonal Leadership and Team Management and excels in helping companies get the best out of their people and in helping people get the best out of themselves.