Why I Coach
I spent two decades leading within businesses and an industry built on the need for relentless growth. Pitching for clients that could make or break a budget. Financial targets that only ever moved up. Clients who wanted more for less. Needing to continually evolve the business to keep pace with change. That was the environment I led in, and it’s shaped how I understand leadership under pressure today, not as theory, but from the inside. It’s also what set me on a path, a decade ago, to start studying the impact of pressure on leadership more formally.
It was also from personal experience. In my early thirties, as a newly appointed MD, I received feedback that changed how I began to understand myself as a leader and my impact on others.
Under pressure to deliver, my instinct was always to push harder and take on more, never slow down. That drive had built my success, but as I became more senior, it was starting to exact a real cost on the people around me and their engagement. Learning to slow down, sit with the discomfort of not knowing, ask more questions, and tune in to people’s needs rather than my own task focus was the beginning of a lifelong journey of development.
These experiences are the reason I coach. It’s where my belief in compounding leadership that works under pressure came from, not as an academic exercise but born from real-life experiences.
What I learned in my own leadership, and now as a coach, is that lasting change rarely comes from a dramatic transformational moment in coaching. It comes from the very human work of understanding what drives the pattern, making small, deliberate shifts, and practising them consistently until they compound into something different. That belief shapes every engagement I lead.
My Professional Journey
I started my career as an advertising strategist, curious about how people think, behave, and make decisions. Over time, my drive to achieve led to leadership roles, including Managing Partner, Executive Strategy Director and Chief Operating Officer within Publicis Groupe and other start-up marketing services businesses.
Those roles taught me something no qualification can fully replicate: what it feels like to lead in a fast-moving organisation, managing growth, competing priorities, and the human impact of constant change. That experience is present in every coaching conversation.
I came into coaching because, in my own experience and in watching others, leadership effectiveness is rarely about technical knowledge. It’s about how leaders respond when certainty is low, emotions are present, and the stakes are high. I wanted to understand the mechanisms behind behaviour change that hold. That question brought me to developmental coaching, and it remains the foundation of my work.
My coaching combines something that's still relatively rare in the industry; it’s at the intersection of:
Commercial understanding: COO and Managing Partner roles within global and founder-led businesses. I understand the commercial pressures, the tensions and complexity, and the identity stakes from the inside, not just in theory.
Psychological rigour: PCC accreditation, an MSc in Coaching Psychology, and an MA in Leadership and Organisational Coaching. Ten coaching certifications. The work is grounded in what drives behaviour change, not just what sounds convincing.
Track record of delivering results: trusted by over 500 leaders (and counting) across 65 organisations globally, with a 4.9/5 satisfaction rating from 2,000 surveyed digital coaching sessions, and a proven ability to facilitate meaningful, lasting change.
Working with Me
Clients consistently point to a few things when they describe working with me.
I will help you bring order to complexity: sessions often start with a lot on the table, and my role is to help you see the pattern underneath it, so you leave with clarity rather than more to think about.
My approach is grounded in psychology and the study of performance, not opinion. I will apply best-practice frameworks that are proven to help you make change.
The focus is always on you; my coaching style is not performative. With your permission, I’ll push you to think harder and see things differently, but never at the expense of feeling safe and supported.
The goal is always the same: to help you find clarity and make change stick. Much of my work happens at inflection points, when the business is evolving faster than the leadership system supporting it.
If you’d like to find out more, let’s connect to see if we’re a good fit.
Coaching Credentials
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Master of Science in Coaching Psychology from Sydney University
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Master of Business Leadership from Charles Sturt University
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Graduate Diploma in Organisational Coaching and Leadership from Charles Sturt University
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Level 1 in Organisational Coaching from the Institute of Executive Coaching and Leadership
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Level 2 in Organisational Coaching from the Institute of Executive Coaching and Leadership
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Advanced Certifications in Organisational Coaching from the Institute of Executive Coaching and Leadership
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Certified Hogan Coach
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Certified Systemic Team Coach
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Certified Narrative Coach
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Certified Strengths Coach
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Certified HBDI Coach
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Completed the Immunity to Change Facilitator Workshop
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Professionally certified (PCC) by the International Coaching Federation
Leadership Experience
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Publicis-owned, Zenith – Partner & Chief Operating Officer
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Publicis-owned, Starcom MediaVest – Executive Strategy Director
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Walker Media, UK – Managing Partner
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M&C Saatchi, UK – Media Director
Client Satisfaction
Since 2023, I have partnered with the digital coaching platforms Coach Hub and Ezra. Surveys conducted over 2,000 digital coaching sessions consistently rate coachee satisfaction at 4.9 out of 5.
"I love that what feels like a conversation brings out such deep thoughts. Andrew listens and helps me focus in on exactly the actions, thoughts, or comments that need unpacking."