Trainers & Mentors

Anita Thorpe is a freelance trainer and retailer who tutors on The Tree Shepherd “Start Your Own Enterprise” course.

Anita has worked as a trainer for 20 years, developing managers and staff in the not-for-profit sector. In 1999, she set up Diverse, a popular design-led gift shop in Brixton, south London.

She now combines her training and retailing experience to help new and established business owners develop their own successful enterprises.

As a practising business owner Anita has a real understanding of the day-to-day challenges of running a business and is uniquely placed to advise on resources and strategies for business sustainability.

Georgina is a serial entrepreneur and has always had a passion for nurturing businesses; she has been in the market place for over 15 years. She is a public and motivational speaker, teacher, trainer, mentor, author, and owner of a community café in South London. Her main aim is to see others thrive in their businesses, turning their passions into profits.

Georgina’s ethos is to empower others to achieve their goals.

Her experience enables her to assist with all areas of business development; however, her specialties are business growth, marketing, branding and sales. Based in Tulse Hill, South East London, where she owns a business, Georgina has coached and mentored small businesses in the local surrounding. Therefore, she has a good understanding of the area and general vibe which will help in creating the right strategy for your business.

Lisa Newton has a Masters Degree in Investment Management and a first class Honours Degree in Accounting with Marketing and is AAT qualified. She formed her first company in 2004 with £150 in the same month of graduating from City University, London, UK.

Lisa holds directorships in various industries including telecoms, property management, publishing, hair & beauty as well as finance. She has won awards in business including: Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2007, Enterprising Business in 2008, BE Mogul in 2016.

Lisa works mainly with small businesses on their money management and bookkeeping. Lisa can often be found writing books on business and in the non-fiction genre. Her books include: How to Write a Book in Two Weeks, Constant Cashflow, Make the Most of Your Money, How to Start Your Own Bookkeeping Business and How to Franchise Your Business.

Is an accomplished senior consultant with a collaborative leadership style; adept at guiding organisation’s through their development phase into exceptional periods of growth, providing market insights and global opportunities.  A strategic planner with an impressive track record and key transferable skills gained from successfully working across a range of industries.

A strategic consultant with more than 20 years’ experience working in both the private and public sectors, including international donor agencies such as USAid and the European Union Development Fund securing funding for SME and community development projects providing advice to businesses in areas of growth, capacity building, marketing, strategic management and sustainability.

His passion for collaborating with visionary leaders makes him a tremendous asset and ally supporting organisation’s, entrepreneurs and leaders impacting communities, and creating livelihoods.

With a 20-year sales background running his own business and employed by SMEs and corporate organisations, Lawrence has dedicated himself to helping business owners realise their sales ambitions.

Lawrence started his career in business development working for the family catering firm and ‘cold calling’ for an IT services SME, then moved to Pitney Bowes and Otis Lifts, the US corporates where he received first class sales training. He has a wealth of experience of managing key accounts, enterprise sales, business development and consultative selling.

He really honed his craft and knowledge running his own consulting business for 5 years, helping small businesses across diverse sectors to develop and execute their plans for growth and now works alongside business owners and their sales teams to help unlock sales and marketing success.

Dr Natalie Schoon, CFA, LLM, is a results driven professional with a broad background across the financial industry. She has lived and worked in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia working with both small and large organisations in the financial services industry. She has successfully completed a range of regulatory change projects in the UK and the EU; regulatory compliance reviews; and a gap analysis in relation to IFRS 9.

She has undertaken an advisory role on a World Bank project for mortgage lending in Pakistan, and made a significant contribution to a scoping study for the further development of access to finance, gender equality, and poverty alleviation or the Prosperity Fund (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) in Turkey.

At the Agricultural Development Fund in Afghanistan, she headed up the Islamic financial services section and was responsible for the design, implementation, and management of the Islamic financial services offered to SME firms in the agricultural sector with an uptake over 50% of the portfolio.

Adrian King is a strategy and business development consultant with 30 years’ international experience. He has worked across a wide range of sectors, including communication and e-commerce technologies and healthcare. He has long term relationships with key clients and has worked directly for another 70 companies and has extensive international experience.

He supports businesses on strategic positioning, commercialisation, new business development, and organisational change. Adrian’s consulting career has largely been based in two organisations: Omega Partners and the Strategia Group. He was a founder employee and then partner in Omega, and then founded the Strategia Group. He has frequently partnered with the leading international consulting firms (Accenture, Deloitte, and PwC).

With no idea what to do in life at 18 years old, George found his first job selling commercial window cleaning contracts in Central London in 1988, where he quickly learnt how to sell, roll out and manage large projects. This led to him being headhunted in 1994 into a much larger company, where he was involved with the bidding and project management of support service contracts for the likes of Gatwick Airport and the European Parliament building in Strasbourg.

In 1997 he started his own company providing cleaning, waste management and soft services to a wide variety of commercial customers from FTSE100 companies to SMEs. Running a number of successful businesses over the years, George has developed an in-depth knowledge of detailed business planning, recruitment, training and staff development. He has experience in financing and developing commercial business premises, as well as creating and enacting successful marketing strategies. George has guided his various organisations through some very major changes over the years, helping not only the businesses, but also his staff to cope and thrive through times of change.

Graham is a Chartered Accountant who has been an shareholder director of two successful businesses in the Regeneration and Business Services Sectors.

Since selling his last business, he has held a number of Non Executive positions including that of Audit Chair at NHS Lambeth CCG. He has been a volunteer Mentor/Business Advisor at Tree Shepherd for several years.

Grahams specific skills are in the areas of finance, financial planning, property and key account sales management.

James is a registered osteopath and director of bodytonic clinic. James started his career in 2006 as a locum therapist slowly creating his practice over the years, renting small occasional spaces to work from. Having built up a patient list in 3 London locations James had the opportunity to take on a clinic premises and from here he started to employ other therapists and now James runs a successful clinic with other 25 team members offering a wide range of treatments. In October 2018 bodytonic clinic was named Practice of the Year at the UK osteopathy awards.  In 2019 James was also personally named Entrepreneur of the year at the Southwark Business Awards.

Paul Mervin is an experienced business consultant with a strong focus on using new technologies to drive business success.

Paul has a background in starting up new companies and setting up new divisions within existing organisations. He works regularly with Tree Shepherd as a mentor to a wide range of start-ups, micro-businesses and small businesses.

His expertise is in business development strategies, using technology as a business enabler, understanding your market, and developing “go to market” strategies.

Tiffany McLean is a Business & Leadership Coach and Marketing Strategist and has worked with Senior Managers and Executives in the U.S., U.K. and Europe helping them to gain clarity and consciousness in their working practices and overcome challenges.

Tiffany currently holds a BA and PG Dip in Business Management, and a Diploma in Transformational Coaching. Tiffany has worked as an Operations Manager for a major global manufacturing company and currently contracts as a Project Manager to one of the UK’s leading local authorities.

In 2018, Tiffany McLean Coaching was started, focusing on helping others to achieve their dreams. Her passion is to help small business owners to generate more leads, conversions and transactions for their business.

Originally from America, Tiffany has been living in South East London for over 16 years and is passionate about the area and wishes to help more local small business owners thrive.

Eunice Thomas is a retail merchandise planning expert with over 20 years experience gained in both corporate and start-up companies. She is specialised in marketing techniques, sales forecasting, merchandise planning and inventory control. With planning experiences of multiple sales channels including retail, wholesale and digital, her advice can guide you to get the right products to the right place at the right price to maximise the profitability and minimise terminal stock.

Eunice is a friendly individual, a proactive problem solver as well as a great listener. She is originally from Hong Kong and has lived in the UK for more than 20 years. She believes everyone can achieve what they want to achieve if one believes in oneself. She is keen to go through your individual business journey with you step by step and assist you to reach your goals.

Lorenzo works as Senior Teaching Fellow at the UCL School of Management on the MBA programme, as a sustainability consultant and business coach. As a consultant, he has worked with a number of clients, including Carlsberg, University of the Arts of London (UAL), Heathrow, Unicef, the Commonwealth and London Borough Barking and Dagenham. He is also co-founder and director of InsideOut, a leadership development consultancy which combines the benefits of walking outdoors with the potentials of group facilitation, pioneering a new way people can experience the advantage of walking while engaging in constructive and creative group discussions.

Phil has been involved in a number of businesses but his current focus is Newington Communications, which he co-founded in 2006. Since then has spearheaded its growth in the planning and development sector, and on local and devolved public affairs and public relations. Newington won the SME Excellence award at the 2018 Southwark Business Awards and now has a team of around 50 full-time consultants, operating from five UK offices. In recent years, Phil and his team have worked on housing, energy and infrastructure projects across the UK, and advised companies such as Canary Wharf Group, Barratt Homes, Legal and General and Far East Consortium.

Newington has joined a larger international group in the last three years and now operates within the SEC-Newgate Group, am AIM-listed communications group with 30 offices in 16 countries. Phil sits on the Management Committee of SEC-Newgate and leads on international real estate growth. Phil started out working in politics, advising on campaigning in various parts of the UK and local authority policy, and also served as a London borough councillor. Phil was previously a member of Catalyst UK, sitting on the UKTI Professional and Business Services Trade and Investment Advisory Group.

No matter what their size, all businesses operate under the same basic principles. Throughout his working career, Bob has been looking at companies and how they perform. Seen the good and the bad decisions made by them and how sometimes they have been drastically affected by circumstances outside of their control.

Obviously nobody can plan for the unknown but you can be aware of things that might happen. Bob can help with your business plans, which maybe complex spreadsheets or just you saying what’s in your head. Having heard your plans he can give his opinion of things to consider. If you are looking for finance (loan or grant) Bob can help you prepare your application. Of course you may just want somebody to bounce ideas off before going further and he is happy to do that.

I am a professional working in Digital across all aspects from research, client management and software development to delivering digital solutions to businesses across a range of platforms – my clients and project span most sectors so I have a broad skill set and experience that will benefit others I mentor. This has enabled me to understand and implement projects and solutions of all shapes and sizes along with the challenges these can bring. I want to mentor because I see it as an essential process to enable others to develop and maximise their potential and understand where to focus to ensure success and fulfilment. I feel that I will also learn from this process with the aim of helping those get to here they want to. If I can help with that in any way then I will feel this will be of benefit to everyone. I am passionate about what I do and have a strong desire to help others in whatever way I can both in personal and professional development.

Adam Reed has over 20 years’ experience in marketing globally known brands, across the family entertainment, not-for-profit, and publishing sectors.

Gaining a BA in Politics & French at the University of Sussex, Adam opted for marketing as a career choice, working for companies such as Disney, Save the Children, and Penguin publishing.

He has overseen the development of multiple strategic plans; from the foundation of every strategy, consumer insights projects, development of the objectives and strategies to realise them, through to the final implementation.

Adam has managed marketing teams, with disciplines ranging from brand marketing, comms & publicity, partnership management and digital and social media.

Born and raised in SE London, Adam wants to be able to share some of his experience with others in the area, giving guidance where possible to those who are looking to embark upon their own professional journey.