Category: Only Team Member

Sean brings his passion and experience in organisational change management for global brands to the Legitimate Leadership team.

Having graduated in chemistry from Surrey University, Sean started the first phase of his career as an analytical chemist at Carlsberg, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). While he progress in those organisations he also observed major organisational change. This sparked his passion for Lean Manufacturing and , at GSK, he completed his green belt in Six Sigma and ran several “Lean Lab” projects to improve manufacturing efficiency and performance.

In 2010 he moved full time into Lean at Johnson Matthey’s Clean Air Division manufacturing facility for catalytic converters for the European market.

At Johnson Matthey he worked on quality engineering, focusing on product and process design robustness. This role was also customer-facing as he was often asked to attend customer visits to explain how quality requirements were met throughout the design process. He then moved full time into major problem-solving projects, running multiple teams to resolve high-impact customer issues using structured problem-solving methodologies. His team rolled out the training and development of structured problem-solving process across multiple manufacturing sites.

He then worked as operations manager at Johnson Matthey’s catalytic converter plant in Royston, UK. The site leadership team constantly had to handle soaring and unpredictable demand while contending with a legacy plant and a very large product mix, a new ERP (enterprise resource planning) deployment and multiple stock builds. In April 2020 he was appointed plant manager and immediately had to contend with COVID-19.

Johnson Matthey then began major restructuring, and he was given the sad task of closing the plant, which employed over 800 people.

Sean started working full time for Legitimate Leadership in May 2022.

Based out of Cambridgeshire, Sean is married with three young children. He’s also an avid sports fan with a Google-like ability for football statistics. He loves attending live events, especially at Wembley. And he has also picked up marathon running again after a few years off.

Rean was born and raised in South Africa.

His first job, in 1980, was as a prison warden. He immediately began integrating psychology work with this job and came face to face with a lack of care and accountability.

He later moved to one of the largest gold mines in South Africa, working in training and development as well as leadership assessment. He then worked as an industrial psychologist for various organisations. .

In 1999 he began a career in executive coaching where he was co-director of one of the largest coaching companies in SA

His expertise today includes practical leadership experience, global executive leadership growth, behaviour assessment and management, industrial and organisational psychology, strategic business planning and analysis, risk evolution and mitigation, and project planning and execution.

As a consultant and executive coach he has worked for a wide range of companies, in many places – including Rössing Uranium Mine of Namibia, the Saudi Arabia Saline Water Conversion Company, the Botswana Power Corporation, Kenya Syngenta & Monsanto, Volvo, Glencore, Anglo American, etc.

Rean received the Da Vinci Mandala Research Award for applying the principles of systems thinking to his PhD research.

In his spare time, Rean enjoys spending time with his family, writing, travelling, and on the farm with his cattle.

After studying engineering, Rachael spent over 20 years in the chemical industry, leading teams to deliver change within busy production environments while also serving as a member of a site management team. While technically interesting, it was always the people side of her work that was of particular concern and motivation for her. She thus took every opportunity to become involved in coaching and development.

Half way through her career she was exposed to the Legitimate Leadership framework. She recognised this as the leadership approach to which she had been aspiring.

In 2016 she became an independent consultant, assisting clients in delivering successful engineering projects through interim management, supporting studies, team capability and systems.

Rachael lives with her husband in the lovely Ribble Valley in the north west of England. Outside work she is keen on getting plenty of exercise, and jumps into any creative craft that comes her way. Recently, for instance, she has turned her enjoyment of doodling towards work-based visual facilitation and sketchnoting (note-taking using both words and visuals).

Growing up as a dual British-French national in the UK, Joolz developed a cultural sensitivity that has shaped her work as an adult. After graduating she joined a consulting firm which relocated her to California at the height of the dot com era to work with Cisco. There she led and launched their global Channel Training Partner sales certification program, before moving on to similar work with other Telecoms giants.

This was followed by the opportunity to set up and run a team in Houston for Compaq (pre-HP merger), to support their Enterprise-wide customer relationship management (CRM) roll-out. After identifying the change barriers and working with leaders across the US and UK sales organisations to drive adoption she then worked for the start-up arm of the consulting business to develop a CRM sales ‘plug-in’. In hindsight this was a very early version of an app!

Many sleepless nights later, she took a sabbatical to train as a yoga teacher and travel across Peru and to India (which she still loves to visit whenever possible).

Back in the UK, she continued to work as a project manager, business analyst and change management consultant in the CRM space. In 2008 she became an independent consultant focusing on leadership and culture.

Joolz has always believed that organisations need to become more human-centred, purpose and values-led. When she was introduced to the Legitimate Leadership Model, she instantly recognized that it addressed all the challenges her clients wrestled with, while translating the theory into practice in a real and structured way.

Now living in Somerset, England, Joolz loves walking in nature, yoga and gardening. She volunteers for an India-based charity that offers education and empowerment programmes to women who have no other means or livelihood. She lives with her husband, has a stepson and is an adoring aunt to her four nieces and nephews.

Wendy was brought up in Zimbabwe, Malawi and Britain. She is married and lives in Wiltshire, England.

Wendy was head girl of her high school, Chaplin High in Zimbabwe. She was a competitive swimmer, squash and hockey player before taking up long distance running. After running the Comrades Marathon (87kms) in 1987, she pursued the greater pleasure of running in the veld around Johannesburg (South Africa) with her two Irish setters. Initially she studied English Literature and Psychology, then completed an MA (Industrial and Organisational Psychology). In the late 1980s she qualified as an industrial psychologist with the South African Medical and Dental Council.

Her first job was on a research project sponsored by South African companies which aimed to advance at work people who had been disadvantaged by the apartheid system She was then employed in the human resources department of what was, at the time, the biggest explosives factory in the world (African Explosives and Chemicals Industries (AECI), Modderfontein). After three years she bought a one-way ticket to India in order to take her retirement in instalments (a piece of advice which she had been given). In the two years she spent on the road, mainly in Asia and the Middle East, she discovered two abiding passions: mountains and the human qualities which enable different people across the world to live meaningful lives.

Back in South Africa, she was engaged to set up a pioneering accelerated development programme sponsored by the Paris Chamber of Commerce in partnership with South African institutions. Launched in 1986, this programme made a significant contribution to nurturing management talent in South Africa for the next 15 years. She returned to the world of explosives manufacturing, which was beset by productivity, quality and, above all, safety concerns – at the core of which was a failure in leadership. In a senior organisational development role in AECI, she worked with leadership to transform the organisation. The golden thread was the care and growth leadership model.

She has since consulted across a wide range of organisations both locally and internationally on the implementation of the Legitimate Leadership Model.

In 2014, she formed Legitimate Leadership to further support organisations, both in South Africa and internationally, to apply the Legitimate Leadership Model. Over the past two decades she has become an internationally-recognised authority on practically achieving transformation in organisations using the care and growth leadership model. A client said: “Wendy embodies the values of Legitimate Leadership of people in the workplace, her actions are invariably consistent with these values. In her extensive consultancy work with us, she has on all occasions added value to the specific issue at hand, at the same time consolidating the leadership ethos, both as a philosophy and as integral to our day to day leadership practices.”

Tony began his career as an apprentice draughtsman in the shipyards in north-east England. He was nominated to join a graduate development programme at Newcastle University, where he attained the only first class honours degree in naval architecture in the UK in 1992.

After 10 years of designing and building ships he joined ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) at its Teesside (Middlesbrough) ethylene cracker as a technical engineer. He was subsequently promoted to maintenance management and then operations management roles.

In 1995 he moved to ICI’s catalyst business, initially in a techno-commercial role, selling consultancy services. In this role he gained valuable experience in various cultures in many regions, including the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific.

Tony was then appointed as the site manager in ICI’s UK catalyst manufacturing plant. He soon took on extra duties involving the acquisition and integration of new businesses and joint ventures, and had a role in the acquisition of ICI by Johnson Matthey (JM).

Soon thereafter he became global operations director of JM, during which time he gained a masters degree in manufacturing leadership at Cambridge University. It was there he came across the care and growth leadership framework, which he subsequently introduced in the JM operations function.

Tony then joined JM’s head office to implement a global manufacturing excellence programme. He was asked to focus on leadership aspects and so further introduced the framework into the global management development programme for JM.

Tony’s final position at JM was talent and development director, in which he further refined his skills in people development. After 42 years of full time employment he retired in 2021 to work as a consultant with Legitimate Leadership.

Tony’s other interests include property development. He fulfilled a lifelong wish to build his own house by converting a derelict barn which provides space for other hobbies such as older car and motorbike restoration, and getting stung by the bees he keeps!

Ian spent most of his childhood in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, initially in East London and later at boarding school in Grahamstown. After leaving school, Ian studied and worked in Cape Town, gaining bachelor’s and Master’s business qualifications, as well as valuable experience as part of an Internet start-up during the turn of the century IT boom.

Following his time in Cape Town, Ian lived and worked abroad briefly before he returned to South Africa and took up a business consulting position within a growing IT and management consulting firm. Whilst based primarily in Johannesburg, Ian was also granted the opportunity to live in London and experience Europe. Ian returned to South Africa in 2011 and currently lives in Johannesburg with his wife and two children.

Ian’s passion for leadership began early in his life and continues to this day. Ian has held various leadership positions from captaining the junior national rowing VIII to an MD role in London. Ian was more recently responsible for leading the Professional Services business unit at the aforementioned consulting firm – a role in which he experienced first-hand the power of the Legitimate Leadership approach to leading others. Ian believes that caring for, and growing, one’s team is the primary responsibility of any leader, and that the solution to many of today’s most challenging business problems lies in building strong and sincere workplace relationships based on these two core values.

Peter Jordan grew up on the East Rand in South Africa. He was a high school teacher for nine years and then lectured in history at the Johannesburg College of Education. Peter then moved into industry, as a Training Officer at AECI Explosives and Chemicals (now AEL Mining Services) in 1989.

He gradually moved from training and development to become a human resources generalist, finally being appointed as Group Human Resources Manager. After nine years in this role, Peter retired from AEL at the end of 2010. However he thereafter returned to AEL as a consultant, particularly in organizational transformation.

For most his time at AEL Peter was closely associated with the Legitimate Leadership framework. In the 1990s he was deeply involved in the entrenchment of this model at the AEL manufacturing plants at Modderfontein, Johannesburg.

Leanne started her career in South Africa in the fast-food industry, then moved to the tumultuous security industry in the mid-1990s.

She was instrumental in the formation of a new employer organisation in the South African security industry and was later appointed vice-chairperson of this body; she also served on a regulatory body for the industry.

After a brief period in the construction industry in Zambia, Botswana, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates, she returned to the fast-food sector in South Africa as a shareholder and director.

Leanne’s key strength is converting business strategy into a measurable HR strategy.

Although a generalist, her passion is conflict resolution, change management and improvement of HR service delivery within an organisation.

Since 2012, Leanne has been consulting to various sectors including NGOs, the security industry, light engineering, manufacturing, aeronautics, hospitality, and fast foods. Projects have included disciplinary hearings, conciliation and mediation council representations, coaching and mentoring, policy and procedure re-engineering and implementation, equity reports, facilitation, and industrial relations training.

Leanne has been a Legitimate Leadership associate since November 2016.