Who we are

We comprise a small team of highly talented individuals. The co-founders have been working in close association and collaborating on special projects over the past eight years and have been working independently for the past 20 years. Members of our associate network work with us on specific projects.

Co-founders:

SUSAN FORD BA FGSM LGSM PGCA

Susan is a Professor and Fellow of Speech and Communication at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama based in the Barbican Centre in the City of London. Through her dynamic practical work, publications, lectures and radio programmes she is widely acknowledged as a leading authority on the subject. She has been working successfully in the business and corporate world both nationally and internationally for the past 20 years.

Susan is an experienced conference speaker and frequently does platform and video work for a wide range of organisations and occasions.She has worked for hundreds of companies over her extensive career.

LUCIA DORE BA (HONS), DIP JOURNALISM, LGSM, LTCL

Lucia Dore is Chief Gulf Correspondent for mergermarket, a news wire service owned by the Financial Times Group. She is based in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

As an experienced financial journalist, she has edited a number of financial and IT publications in the UK for organisations such as Euromoney, the Institute of Financial Services, Redwood Publishing and the Association of Foreign Banks.

She also authors management reports and White Papers on strategic business issues, such as shareholder value, risk management, innovation, knowledge management and the knowledge economy. Currently, she is writing a White Paper on behalf of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a Saudi Arabian private equity firm on the challenges for private equity investment in Saudi Arabia.

Lucia has a Licentiate Teacher’s Certificate in Public Speaking from London Guildhall Speech and Drama (LGSM) and is a Competent Toastmaster (CTM). Her experience also includes organizing, chairing, and speaking at international financial conferences and seminars.

She worked as a macro-economist with the New Zealand Treasury after completing her BA (Hons) from the University of Otago. A few years later she completed a post-graduate course in Journalism from the University of Canterbury and then traveled to London.

Our associates

 
Barbara McGeary trained as an actor and speech and drama teacher at ALRA.

She subsequently taught speech, drama and public speaking at ALRA and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She is a passionate believer in the power of the spoken word and the importance of developing confidence in all her students.

She divides her time between running her own Wordworks Studio in Harrow  and  training  with Susan at  Powerful Communication Associates.
 

Philip Bird is an actor, director and performance coach. As well as appearing in numerous productions in the West End and in film and on television, he is a regular performer of leading roles at Shakespeare's Globe, where he is playing this summer in As You Like It. He reads Talking Books, both for commercial use and for Calibre, the charity for the blind and partially-sighted; and was nominated for an Olivier Award for his performance in Good Rockin' Tonite at the Prince of Wales theatre. He works in business, in schools and privately with any professionals who are required to present themselves in front of an audience.

Live performance - be it onstage, in the conference hall or the meeting-room - is at its best when it is dynamic, focused and charismatic. Philip believes that these communication skills can be accessed by everyone, and his sessions are designed to help all individuals to fulfil their potential. 

 
Helen Ashton trained as a Voice and Speech coach at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She graduated from the MA Voice Studies course with Distinction. 

She offers Voice, Speech and Accent training to individuals from a variety of backgrounds. This includes business people, actors and community projects. Helen has worked with individuals from The Department of Defence, DEFRA, The NHS, Sky, Orange, CitiGroup and the Julia Gabriel Centres.

Helen has a specialism in Accent training, and offers Bespoke 'Accent Softening' courses for speakers of English as a second language who would like to achieve a more native British accent. She has designed and delivered courses for speakers of many different languages whose understanding of English is excellent, but who feel that their accent shapes the way that people respond to them.

Chris Bowers is a writer and broadcaster with 25 years' experience of working in all media. He is best known to sporting audiences as an authority on tennis, having broadcast on the sport for the BBC, Eurosport and other media over the past two decades, and written several books, including the first English language biography of Roger Federer.

He also has a strong background in campaigning and local government, having founded an environmental NGO and been a councillor at district council level. He has acted in amateur and professional theatre productions, and has addressed conferences of 1000 delegates and more.

More recently he has got into the burgeoning world of making films for websites. He also has an international dimension, having lived in Germany and Switzerland, following which he is able to converse in German, French and Spanish, along with his native English. Above all he is very sharp about getting to the nub of what people want, often working it out before people do themselves!

Dominic Singleton began his career as an actor and singer songwriter - but after a few "lean" years of small parts in films which frequently ended up on the cutting room floor and lead singer in groups which invariably got disbanded - he decided to stay in the comfort of his own home and focus on script and speech writing. 

He has written a variety of scripts for TV and now divides his time between TV work, research and writing speeches for a wide range of social occasions.

Clare Cooper is a  Consultant Clinical Psychologist as well as a professional actress and qualified speech and voice teacher.  She can bring this unique combination of skills to help develop  confidence in relation to performance anxiety and self esteem, all of which can profoundly affect impact.
 
In the NHS she has worked extensively with people with functional voice projection and production problems. She has a long association with the charity Changing Faces, who provide support and teach communication skills to people affected by disfigurement and difference.  She has produced their communication skills video REACH OUT as well as leading communication skills workshops for clients.
 
She has worked with a wide variety of health professionals, teaching communication skills and team building.