I left school at 16 in 1977, ambitious and certain of one thing: that I could learn anything I needed to learn, and that would be enough to do anything I wanted to do.

It turned out to be roughly true. An HR Director by 29. A CEO and award-winning writer by 36. Thirty-plus years of work in organisations ranging from large corporates to grass-roots community organisations, with a thread running through all of it — a belief that how we treat each other at work is one of the most consequential things we do, and that getting it right matters for individuals and institutions alike.

That belief took me deep into the world of inclusion, diversity and leadership development. I’ve designed learning, led organisations, consulted, coached, written, and spoken — in boardrooms and community halls, in universities and public sector bodies, across sectors and cultures. The work has been varied. The underlying question has always been the same: how do people and organisations become more fully themselves?

Then, in my fifties, that question became personal in a way I hadn’t anticipated. Health challenges, becoming a live-in carer. Events that led me to re-evaluate who I was and who I would be.

The professional chapter I’d been in for a long time started to feel like it was closing. I knew something needed to change — I just couldn’t yet see what came next. That period of not-yet-knowing turned out to be one of the most instructive of my life. It wasn’t comfortable. But working through it — slowly, honestly, with the help of people who asked the right questions — led me somewhere I hadn’t expected and couldn’t have planned.

It led me here.

I trained as a coach because the coaching relationship is one of the most powerful contexts available for the kind of thinking that changes things. Not therapy. Not consultancy. Not mentoring, exactly. Something more specific: a structured, sustained conversation between equals, in which one person helps another see their situation more clearly and move with more intention.

The Next Chapter Method™ is what I’ve built from that work. A framework for helping experienced adults — people in life’s third quarter, people who have done the living and accumulated the capability — navigate the transition from where they are to where they could be. With clarity. With purpose. And with a clear eye on what the next chapter needs to deliver in every sense.

My earlier career isn’t separate from this work. The thread runs straight. Thirty years of thinking about how people understand themselves, how organisations change, how belonging is built and direction found — all of it feeds into how I think about transition and what it takes to move through it well.

If you’re in your fifties and the question of what comes next is live for you, I’d be glad to talk.