Our Founder & Chief Coach

Gary is a fully qualified ICF (International Coaching Federation) Business and Life Coach, having trained under the renowned Barefoot Coaching Group. He is also a member of the EMCC (European Mentoring & Coaching Council).

 

Gary specialises in working with Senior Executives, and their teams, to cope with, and subsequently flourish during periods of often highly stressful transformation in their business and personal lives.

 

During his 40+ year corporate career, primarily at ITV plc, he learnt how to ‘survive and thrive’ during a number of aggressive strategic reviews, often conducted by the major consultancy groups such as McKinsey’s, Bain’s and The Boston Consultancy Group.

 

 

Gary holds a firm belief that all businesses only have their customers ‘temporary loyalty’ and that embracing ‘change’ is a continuous learning and implementing activity that all individuals and high-performance teams should adopt and embrace.

 

He has also mentored CEOs/Senior Director’s in respect of their communication skills, from improving their public speaking to greater awareness of the ‘art of the pitch,’ as well as developing greater awareness around change management times.

 

His corporate career has furnished him with a unique set of skills to carry forward into his Coaching & Mentoring journey, in particular bridging the gap between the commercial and creative worlds. He fully understands the real worlds of revenue acquisition, having been the Executive Sales Director at Granada TV, with over 200 people reporting into him and responsibility for a £2 billion p.a. revenue stream. 

But he also is acutely aware that Businesses need to build collaboration and harmony across all their diverse divisions. At ITV plc, in the role of Commercial Content Director, he was tasked with ‘bringing together’ the three primary units – Commercial, Creative (Studios) and Distribution (Channels/Commissioning). Previously these areas had acted as ‘isolate islands,’ rather than a unified ‘Kingdom.’  Gary was highly successful in shaping this evolution against a background of intense change as the existing Linear TV Broadcast model was being eroded by the rapidly emerging digital landscape.

 

Gary is primarily a people-first person, and flourishes within a ‘top of the form’ communication skillset. This was recognised when he was appointed Chair of the ITV Ambassadors initiative- a bold re-imaging of how the company could engage with all of its 2000 employees within a dynamic framework. One of the major outcomes of this move was to create a series of mentoring streams which included all layers of the business.

 

 

 

Gary began to pursue his own business interests,

after he left his corporate career at ITV plc, where he held the role of Executive Commercial Content Director. He set up a small business as a Creative Services Provider, then followed his passion for effective communication skills by setting up " Pitch Me Your Story,'' which helps people from all walks of life maximise their public speaking, pitching, and presenting skills.

Gary has a deep passion for creativity, particularly with respect to creative solutions for problem area domains. 

He has experienced many large-scale business transformations in his career, and calls upon these challenging periods to help both individuals and teams, to successfully chart their way through these 'stormy seas.'

After completing an MBA at Central St. Martin's College, he has been exploring a new chapter in Business & Personal Coaching & Mentoring.

Perpetual Wave Coaching & Mentoring is the result of this next voyage in his life.