Prior to working independently, Penny held senior learning & development and talent roles in challenging sectors. She led L&D services for Sainsburys, providing development support to all of retail, supply chain and head office, c.145,000 colleagues UK wide before moving to the hospitality sector as Head of HRD for Scottish & Newcastle Retail, and then to The Spirit Group where she was Director of L&D and later Director of Talent, supporting more than 50,000 colleagues across 2,500 pubs, bars and restaurants.

Since starting Foxtail Development in 2006, she has thoroughly indulged her love for development in personally supporting a broad range of clients. Penny has provided executive and board development support, leadership programmes and coaching to clients in sectors that include energy, retail, hospitality, life sciences, healthcare, medical devices, supply chain, oil & gas, maritime, renewables, technology, construction and the public sector, working both in the UK and worldwide.

Penny discovered the power of coaching early in her development career whilst at Sainsburys, developing a concept of observation coaching that was to be shared across the organisation. She participated in the first ever UK research group for Executive Coaching with the Institute for Employment Studies at the forefront of the coaching movement in the UK, and has been a passionate, practising advocate of coaching for more than 25 years. Highly accomplished in the arena, Penny persistently champions coaching development for leaders as a critical skill that will really differentiate leadership success, and actively provides extensive coaching development to leaders and development professionals worldwide.

A reputation for warmth, good humour and challenge, always with her client’s best interests in mind, she is highly intuitive with insightful understanding of both context and people, supporting them with pragmatic development that clients find loaded with value yet easy to apply.