Meet Our Team

Anna Cornwallis

Seeing the opportunity to help SMEs by using big company discipline applied appropriately to smaller organisations, Anna joined Stratton HR in 2004. Working as a trusted adviser, Anna works alongside clients to understand their ambitions and identify the steps they need to take to achieve them. Whether it’s organisational change, management profiling, resourcing or talent development, Anna guides her clients through the process, becoming an integral part of their senior team.

Hands-on, direct and personable, Anna is highly valued by her clients for the business transformations she has helped them achieve. Her best ideas are often forged whilst walking her dogs on the Quantock Hills or rustling up a family roast. She also enjoys watching most sports, travelling the world and is partial to a spot of really good food and wine.

Hannah Langston

Hannah has worked for Stratton HR for over 10 years and now leads our HR Support service. She works with the team to help our clients successfully deliver their people strategy. Hannah has a strong generalist background, working across multiple sectors offering strategic and operational HR support. Having spent the last 10 years specifically working with growth SMEs, she is well known by clients for offering professional and pragmatic advice that is contextually and commercially relevant.

Passionate, driven and hugely practical she understands what needs to be done and how. What you see is what you get! With a football mad son, Hannah can mostly be found at the side of a football pitch cheering him on (whilst trying to pretend she’s not competitive!). If it’s not football, it’s quality time with family and friends – normally with food and drink involved!

Vicki Page

Vicki joined the team in 2022 as our Senior HR Business Partner, supporting our clients with both strategic and operational HR. With 20 years of experience, Vicki has gained experience working across multiple sectors including marketing, agriculture, technology, and non-profit.

She is well versed working in both established and emerging companies, both in the UK and in EMEA. She has strong expertise in complex ER, organisational design, recruitment, TUPE and developing policy D&I.  Outside the office Vicki loves to travel with her family, finding lots of adventures along the way.

Charlotte Sully

Charlotte joined the team in 2012 and often leads our HR diagnostic. Through the diagnostic she partners with clients to design people plans and works closely with those that need support setting up day to day HR operations. She is a great project manager and has experience delivering projects across HR systems, Reward & Recognition, Performance Management and Recruitment.

Charlotte also helps our flexible HR clients who need practical and timely advice on people issues. Charlotte loves her food and nothing more than a good catch up with friends over a tasting menu!

Lauren Aspel

Lauren is our HR Business Partner, having joined the team as HR Advisor in 2021. She plays a key role in supporting on day to day HR as well as project work. She’s practical, methodical and has a keen eye for detail and is a trusted pair of hands across many of our clients. Lauren is a HR and recruitment systems guru and is the go-to if you want to know anything in this regard!

Lauren is a keen baker, specifically baking sweet treats (although some may say she doesn’t make enough for the Team!). Following the foodie trend, Lauren spends her weekends either relaxing with a coffee in hand or trying out new restaurants and cuisines.

Harriet Coley

Following a successful placement year at Stratton HR, Harriet returned to the business as HR Assistant. As well as ad-hoc HR Support, Harriet supports clients with recruitment, ongoing project management, psychometric profiling and learning and development programmes.

Harriet continues her studies even now and when not studying, Harriet will likely be found out with her friends visiting new cities or reading a good book!

Raluca Birken

Raluca joined the team in 2023 with over 15 years’ experience in various industries including food manufacturing and maritime industry. She is a true generalist with a great interest in people and what makes them unique. She believes in bringing your whole authentic self to work as when people are themselves, they perform better. Her business partnering style is to understand the real people issues and work alongside any organisation to deliver their strategy through each individual.

Raluca is a mother of 3 girls whom she is immensely proud of. And because raising 3 children (and 3 pets!) is not busy enough, she also volunteers for youth groups where she uses her HR background and skills to develop and support the next generation in becoming the best they can be.

People are her true passion and if she is not working with people, she will be busy baking and sharing food with whoever is around her at the time.

Natalie Crofts

Natalie joined Stratton HR in January 2023 after spending the majority of her HR career within the hospitality industry, largely in hotels.

She is a true HR generalist and loves to work alongside teams in different departments, supporting them with their people agenda. Natalie is passionate about building performance improvement through people, engagement, and culture and building strong stakeholder relationships.

On the weekends when she is not running her two busy girls around, Natalie can be found in the kitchen trying out new recipes. She also loves a good movie or two and watching F1.

Danielle Hughes

Sabina Sofrone

Sabina joined Stratton HR in 2023, bringing with her over 6 years of experience in the dynamic fields of Food Manufacturing, Agriculture and Logistics Recruitment. From her earliest days in the industry, Sabina discovered a profound passion for connecting with people on a fundamental level. This passion drives her to promote relationships that extend far beyond the professional sphere, to the point where she often jokes that she could build a rapport with a tree!

Her ability to forge genuine connections with individuals, understand the unique needs of a client and empathise with candidates makes her approach is authentic and empathic.

Away from work, Sabina loves to discover new places and try new foods. She combines the two checking out tasty new restaurants and cafes while travelling.

Courtney Burgess

Courtney joined Stratton in 2024 after 4 years’ experience as a HR Graduate after completing her International Business Management degree. She has worked across many industries including Waste, Operations, Manufacturing and Sales.

Courtney helps support her clients with anything from operational responsibilities to strategic priorities and functions as a true generalist. Solution-focussed and adaptable, Courtney is keen to support clients any way she can and like most of the Stratton HR team she has a soft spot for some really good food.

She also loves travelling the world seeing new places and meeting new people.

Amy Meeten

Amy joined us for her first full role in HR, having finished her masters in HR Management in 2022.

Before joining Stratton, she worked as a training administrator in a mental health hospital, developing those much-prized qualities of resilience, problem-solving skills and working under pressure. Amy truly believes people are the most fundamental part of any business, and finds it very rewarding and stimulating being part of that process.

In her free time she keeps fit by cycling and gym classes, and she really loves to read – sometimes as much as 2-3 books a week!

Shelley Hobson

Shelley joined Stratton in 2024, having spent 8 years of working within HR and Recruitment, bringing a unique blend of industry expertise from Financial Services to Motorsport.

She enjoys helping to build high-performing teams, leveraging her experience in recruitment, employee development, and HR support.

In her spare time she loves to spend time with her two dogs, friends and family and always enjoys planning her next trip.

Sophie Baughan

Sophie joined Stratton HR in October 2024 and has a wide range of experience in the education and housing industries, specialising in HR systems and operational management.

Sophie has led an operational team whilst successfully delivering HR system implementations and improvements and has a strong desire to use data to drive improvement and help with decision making.

On a personal level, Sophie is a busy mum running around after two teenagers and two cocker spaniels who like to keep her on her toes!

Imogen Ellis

Imogen joined Stratton HR in October 2024 as the HR and Marketing Intern, after graduating from the University of Liverpool in the summer where she studied Business and Sociology.

She is excited about the opportunity to learn and contribute to the team with her skills she gained from University.

In her spare time she loves staying active, particularly running and likes to have a new goal to work towards. She completed two half marathons this year and is looking for her next one. She always loves to travel and visit new places with her friends and family and try out all the local food and drink!

Katie Demain

Katie joins the Stratton HR team as Head of Learning & Development. Katie brings her years of experience as an OD expert across various sectors and her experience working at some of the world’s top business schools to Stratton HR. Katie has worked with a number of Stratton’s clients since 2009 in her capacity as an Executive Coach as well as designer and facilitator of Management/Leadership Development Programmes and Leadership Teaming Programmes.

She specialises in Positive Leadership and leads sessions employing psychometric tools, strategic communications frameworks and cultural change methodologies. She is a public speaker and thought leader on the Science of Happiness at Work. She’s highly personable and is quick to grasp what makes people tick, what’s holding them back and how to help them thrive.

Katie has lived and worked in 12 countries and is now relishing living back in her native Northumberland. A keen walker, she recently completed a MacMillan Cancer ‘Mighty Hike’ of 26 miles along the Northumbrian coastline. Her next big walk will be St. Cuthbert’s Way from Melrose to Holy Island.

Anthony Manning

Anthony has developed and refined his coaching expertise, having gained extensive experience throughout his career. He is a trusted leadership advisor, providing support and executive coaching to C-Suite leaders and senior partners at Big Four firms. He is also an experienced and qualified international sports coach. ​Anthony has worked with Stratton as a coach since 2020.

Anthony is passionate about making a difference by supporting leaders in navigating the opportunities and challenges they face in an ever-evolving and often turbulent business context.  He is known for his dynamic and innovative coaching approach and for enabling leaders to tap into the resources they have in order to achieve high performance as individuals and in leading their teams.  ​

As an enthusiastic and life-long learner, Anthony has completed an MA in Management Studies and an MSc in Training and Development. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and completed a postgraduate coaching qualification at Henley Business School.  ​

Anthony draws on his experience as a senior HR Business Partner, Head of Learning and Development , OD Consultant and Executive Coach in two of the Big Four accounting firms.  

Anusha Parshotam

Anusha is a commercial, pragmatic and highly focussed executive coach and facilitator. She draws on sound psychological theories and her work experience, and balances this with practical interventions that are fit for purpose for organisations and individual clients. She continues to receive positive feedback for her ability to really understand a client, be relevant, and provide useful knowledge. Over the past year she has focussed on Diversity, Inclusion, Wellbeing, Resilience and Leadership, working with clients to understand their needs, designing appropriate workshops and facilitating them. Anusha has worked with Stratton as a coach since 2020.​

Anusha has over 15 years’ experience working in Senior Human Resources roles, working across different sectors (FMCG, Professional Services, Financial Services, Legal Services, Charities and Start Ups) and geographies (especially Southern Africa and UK). She has extensive experience working strategically with organisations, leaders and people to nurture talent, build high performance teams, facilitate change management, and encourage diversity, inclusion and wellbeing. Anusha has coached leaders, partners, managers and her own direct reports on various topics.​

Anusha holds a Master’s degree in Industrial Psychology and is an accredited coach (ACC) through the International Coaching Federation (ICF). She also has a Professional Certificate in Executive Coaching via Henley Business School and a Team Coaching Accreditation via Global Team Coaching Institute. She is a member of the Henley Centre for Coaching and ICF. She has Strengths Deployment Inventory and Voiceprint accreditations too.

David Pike

David is a strategic and commercial entrepreneur and business leader, who also has extensive experience in providing mentoring and coaching support to business leaders, particularly to boards and executive teams of SMEs requiring to grow rapidly.​

​He has been Managing Director of a lean manufacturing business within the automotive industry, as well as co-founded and led People’s Energy, a community focused energy supplier. He raised an initial £500,000 in crowdfunding to start People’s Energy and grew the business to 365,000 customers, £516m turnover and 450 staff within four years. David is co-chair of a Community Interest Company, currently developing plans for investment in renewable energy.​

​In addition to his direct experience as MD and CEO, David has coached hundreds of leaders (at CXO and board level). His clients include the tech, manufacturing, energy, FMCG, banking, tourism, rural, education and charity sectors. He is known for his no-nonsense, ‘high challenge and high support’ approach. As a leader he injects a sense of pace and urgency into decision making and problem solving; in his coaching approach he similarly challenges leaders to take accountability and tackle issues head on and at pace. David is also a trained psychotherapist and uses his depth of insight to support leaders to overcome potential barriers to success. His empathetic skills are combined skilfully with a strong drive towards measurable outcomes and the courage to challenge when needed. ​

​David holds an MBA, MSc and Diploma (in business, coaching and counselling). 

Karin Sode

Karin is an experienced strategic and commercial business leader, advisor, coach and Non-Executive Director, providing strategic partnership and leadership support to C-suite leaders and boards. Karin started coaching with Stratton in 2023.​​

She co-founded and led a start-up company, People’s Energy, the UK’s only crowdfunded and social enterprise energy supplier, from zero to 365,000 customers, 450 employees, and a turnover of over £500m in just four years. As joint CEO, she led all areas of the business, as well as engaging with external stakeholders, including potential investors and policy makers up to senior ministerial level within the UK government. She has also led a short-term turn-around agenda for a global leadership strategy consultancy, prior to a planned trade sale.​​

Karin has provided executive coaching (individuals and teams), top team strategic support, and conflict resolution services to senior executives and Boards across a range of businesses and sectors. These include tech and fintech (Skyscanner, Nucleus Financials); utilities (Scottish Power, TDC – largest Danish telecom); pharmaceuticals and bio sciences (Astra Zeneca, Danisco/Dupont); finance (RBS, Standard Life/Phoenix); FMCG (Diageo, Kerry Foods, Noble Foods) and manufacturing (Velux). Her client list also includes a series of rapid-growth SMEs and charities. She has also recently joined the Board of Social Enterprise UK. ​​

Clients report on finding Karin incisive and insightful, supportive but also honest and direct in her challenge. She seeks to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the individual leader, working jointly with them to help them achieve ambitious goals. ​

Educated at the Universities of Edinburgh, Copenhagen and Jerusalem, Karin holds a PhD in linguistics/organisational communication. She is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford and has guest lectured at Saïd Business School. Karin is also a Certified Practitioner, Corporate Transformation Tools (The Values Centre), accredited in psychometric tools (Hogan, Myers Briggs, Saville, Firo B, Level A), a trained team coaching and coaching supervisor (Peter Hawkins, Bath Consultancy Group) and a trained mediator/ conflict resolution practitioner (Core Mediation, Edinburgh; and Non-Violent Communication)

Lesley Spencer

Lesley is an executive, business and team coach with a focus on leadership, organisational growth and team dynamics. She works with senior individuals and teams who are facing professional and or personal challenges and opportunities. Lesley has worked with Stratton as a coach since 2021.​

During Lesley’s 30+ year career (in professional services) at senior leadership and C Suite levels, she has honed a skillset that encourages and supports development and constructive change for business, teams and individuals. She has held positions of Managing Director, Projects and Acquisitions Director, Strategy Director, Chief Operations Officer and Chief Financial Officer and has led groups and teams through significant periods of change. She has faced most of the issues leaders find themselves faced with.​

Lesley is passionate about helping leaders to understand and develop their personal leadership style and the impact they have on the organisational dynamics and success of their team and business. She works with leaders and teams facing many different challenges, helping them to resolve their issues, improve their performance and relationships and find greater confidence and satisfaction in their work and personal lives. ​

Lesley is highly qualified as an ICF ACC Certified Coach, an EMCC Team Coaching Accredited Coach,  a Barefoot qualified coach, an accredited NLP practitioner and a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants.

Michael Ladd

Michael has more than twenty-five years of experience consulting the senior leadership of large, international firms in transformation initiatives, strategic marketing, talent management and organizational development.    Leveraging his broad experience, Michael is able to collaborate and communicate across functions and management levels, from younger, mid-level managers to the most senior executives.  Michael has worked with Stratton as a coach since 2023.​

His work includes large, global and smaller, local organizational transformation initiatives involving multiple management levels and functions. Michael’s background in strategy and marketing allows him adapt and focus his coaching support in alignment with the current business objectives and context of the organization. ​

Michael has strong interpersonal skills and a high level of cultural flexibility, having studied, lived and worked in an international environment for over 30 years.  In addition, Michael’s fluency in multiple languages allows him to connect quickly and establish a rapport with his international clientele.  ​​

Michael brings a high level of energy to each and every engagement.  His extreme attention to detail, combined with a constant eye on the big picture, allows him to connect the dots quickly and identify the root causes and drivers of any given situation.    ​

Michael is certified in the Level I Hogan Assessment and has used a variety of other psychometric tools – MBTI, CliftonStrengths, Insights Discovery, OPQ, Qi, and FiroB – as part of his coaching engagements.

Nina Berezowski

Originally from South Africa, Nina moved to the UK as a young adult, providing a fascinating insight into how different cultures work and what it takes to be successful in each. Nina spent 17 years in senior HR, talent, and change management positions within global companies in the consulting, financial services, telecommunications and retail sectors, before moving in to coaching and consulting. Nina has worked as a coach with Stratton since 2020.​

Supporting senior leaders through development transitions, Nina works with individuals to develop a deeper understanding of self to enable meaningful change. Nina specialises in system psychodynamics; an interdisciplinary field that integrates and applies influences from psychoanalysis, group relations theory and systems thinking. This offers an exploratory approach to understanding organisations and the behaviour of those who work within them. Whether it is working at the individual, team or organisational level, Nina focuses on uncovering underlying issues, rather than simply attending to surface symptoms or challenges.​

Nina’s qualifications (a masters degree in Organisational Psychology, Certificate in Systems Psychodynamic Coaching, and Senior Practitioner Accredited Coach, EMCC) combined with her commercial business experience, enable her to create challenging environments that give leaders the confidence to work at depth to uncover ‘what’s really going on’ and to tackle the hard to reach issues and patterns of behaviour that may be limiting their performance. Nina’s clients value her approach of combining psychological insight with the current realities of business and leadership.