Yvonne Howard

Education and Experience: Yvonne is a trained Architect and graduated from De Montfort University. It was her passion for designing inclusively, beyond Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Vitruvian Man’, that led her into researching industry standards on inclusive design and services. Yvonne has gained experience as a diversity lead across the public and private sector and has advanced diversity and inclusion in complex and political organisations including Transport for London, Essex County Council and Crossrail.

Professional Skills and Expertise: Yvonne has a post graduate diploma in Architecture and Business Management, Institute of Leadership Management level 7 in Leadership and undertook leadership training at Judges Business School, Cambridge University. She has over 20 years’ experience of equipping organisations to live their inclusive values through behaviours which attract and retain diverse talent. Since setting up her business six years ago, she is privilege to practice what she enjoys most: facilitating and coaching people to get the most from themselves, their teams and to grow nurturing organisations. She is renowned for her enthusiastic engaging style; creating spaces where people feel safe and comfortable to be themselves. Facilitated courses include, Conflict Resolution, Unconscious Bias, Inclusive Leadership, Cultural Intelligence and Having Meaningful Conversations. She mentors women within the construction sector.

Indicative Clients: As a consultant Yvonne worked as Crossrail’s diversity specialist for 19 months, and has worked on shorter assignments with organisations including Tideway, Women into Construction, Construction Industry Training Council, Newham Council, Hatfield and Welwyn Council and the NHS. She has worked collaboratively with diversity specialists for clients including High Speed Rail 2, The Arts Council England, fire and rescue services and a range of private sector clients.

International Experience: Yvonne has worked with global manufacturing clients on developing strategies for promoting inclusive work environments utilising global cultural intelligence.

Coaching Style and Approach: Yvonne’s style and approach is to create a space where people feel comfortable to be open, receptive and vocal. She is familiar with the GROW model for coaching and enjoys using action learning set techniques to achieve different approaches to solving challenges.

“Yvonne set a very positive tone from the start; this helped to encourage everyone to contribute” Inclusive Leadership facilitation

“Yvonne was very engaging and gave lots of opportunity for discussion that was though provoking. I would definitely recommend this session and will try to see things from a different perspective” Unconscious bias in employee lifecycle

“The action learning set was a really useful tool for allowing us to listen ask searching questions to understand the issue without going straight to solutions. I think I have a practical plan that will work…”
Moving on Up programme