Master Trainer Elizabeth Coffey
Political Savvy Certified Trainer
Elizabeth founded Spark Leadership in 2005 to advise Board Executives on developing their organisations by leading change. She directs change projects in blue chip companies across the global banking, pharmaceuticals, telecoms and professional services sectors. These projects span a broad range of organisation development activities, including:
- shaping business strategy
- restructuring a core division
- assessing FTSE 250 Board members
- developing leaders and top teams, and
- crafting strategic culture change
She is also the Non-Executive Director of Green Bay Media, a Bafta-winning independent film company. Elizabeth lectures frequently on change, leadership and organisation development on academic and professional platforms in the UK and internationally. She won the accolade of Mentor of the Year at the Women of the Future Awards 2007.
In early 2008, she was part of an exclusive UK trade delegation to India hosted by the British High Commission to strengthen business ties across the two nations. She was recently on the leadership panel at the Women’s Economic Empowerment Summit.
In 2002, Elizabeth joined Mercer Delta Consulting Ltd. to head the UK Leadership Capabilities practice. She delivered senior leadership development, corporate governance and culture change projects at Unilever plc, Virgin Airways, Merrill Lynch, Xerox Europe, EDF energy, Deutsche Bank, the BBC and with Cabinet Ministers.
Previously, Elizabeth spent five years as a Partner with The Change Partnership Ltd., developing a portfolio of leaders and senior teams from top FTSE 250 companies and public sector organisations. A sample of Elizabeth’s global clients included GSK, AstraZeneca, PwC, Accenture, Nortel Networks, British Airways, Goldman Sachs, Capital One, Prudential, Ford of Europe and HM Civil Service.
Her latest book on leadership was published by McGraw Hill in 2002, entitled 10 Things That Keep CEOs Awake – and How to Put Them to Bed. This went into its second print after 2 months and has been translated into Chinese.
The End of Tolerance?, published in 2002, outlined Elizabeth’s practical approach to business diversity issues in one of its chapters. In 1999, Elizabeth co-authored The Changing Culture of Leadership – Women Leaders’ Voices – a research-based book about women leaders across 20 industries in the UK.
Elizabeth led diversity development projects on gender, ethnicity, disability, organisational and national culture. In 2001, Elizabeth won a European Woman of Achievement Award for her work in this area, and she was invited by the World Economic Forum to be one of three leadership panelists alongside two First Ladies.
In Frankfurt, 1993, Elizabeth co-founded a cross-cultural consultancy to help German leaders develop more effective global management skills. She joined Saxton Bampfylde Hever plc in London, 1995, to carry out Director-level succession searches across industries in the UK and worldwide.