"We should come home from adventures, and perils, and
discoveries every day with new experience and character."  
Henry David Thoreau

What makes us who we are...?

An experienced manager having worked as a Team Manager for more than ten years at branches of Norwich Union (now AVIVA) across the south of England.

In 2001 Lesley’s interest in learning and development led her to become a consultant within the Intermediary Business training team for Norwich Union, at which time she studied NLP to Master Practitioner Level.  After eighteen years Lesley left to broaden her experience, taking up a key role as the lead trainer for the NHS Agenda for Change project team in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.    

Wanting to continue her self development Lesley studied for the Diploma in Management and in 2005 she was awarded the Wessex Shield in recognition of her studies by the local Chartered Management Institute (CMI), of which she is now a member of the board.  Lesley returned to a management role becoming the General Manager of a successful small business in 2005. 

Lesley has since decided to fulfill a growing ambition to manage her own business and created The Way Ahead Training and Consultancy in 2007, with a mission to deliver practical training and management solutions to local businesses. 
  
Her approachable and supportive style is indicative of the leaders who have influenced and inspired her to date.  Lesley is also a volunteer mentor with Solent Skills Quest. 

Audrey Davies is a training specialist with 40 years’ experience as a commercial lending banker, trainer and training consultant.

Audrey has designed, managed and presented a wide range of training courses in her roles as Training Manager and Deputy Head of Management Training, at Barclays Bank Management Training Centre.  She has set and marked several years’ examinations as Chief Examiner with the Chartered Institute of Bankers (now ifs), and, as an international training consultant, has designed and delivered bespoke programmes for major clients, worldwide.  For much of the past 20 years, whilst managing her own business, Audrey worked in various countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, helping them to move towards full market economies.  

Her roles included the management of multi-million dollar projects in several countries, on behalf of government bodies such as the British Know-How Fund, European Commission, World Bank, UNDP, etc, as well as for international commercial banks.

More recently, Audrey has managed the procurement and delivery of IT- and management training programmes, in addition to personally delivering both paper-based- and e-portfolio assessment and internal verification for a variety of NVQ candidates.

An experienced trainer and assessor, Robert Young has worked within the Retail and Airline industry for the past twenty four years.  He has written and delivered many training packages, including internal training to comply with new legislation in the airline industry. 

Robert was also part of a training team that implemented a multi million pound customer service initiative for a well-known high street name; designed to create competitive advantage over other leading retailers. 

His roles within the Airline industry include managing the training element for the introduction of various types of aircraft into service, for example the Boeing 737, 757, 747 and the Airbus A320. This included the training for recruitment of Cabin Crew to support the aircraft and responsibility for all third party training facilities. 

Robert is qualified now in ITQ, and has recently assessed candidates in Customer Service and ITQ helping them to gain their own achievements in NVQ qualifications.

Clare Hutton is a fully qualified A1 assessor living in Poole in Dorset, with her three-year-old son.

She has over a decade of experience in the aviation industry, flying passengers and VIP’s on many types of aircraft to worldwide destinations; all the while delivering top class customer service.

Five years ago, Clare decided to utilise her considerable experience in the air, joining the airline’s training team to focus on training cabin crew in safety and first aid procedures.    

After a superb career ‘flying high’, Clare now has, two feet placed firmly on the ground, though her passion for high standards of assessing remains airborne.  Clare is a trainer and assessor motivated by helping people to achieve their full potential.   

Clare continues to update her skills and knowledge and is currently working through a modern apprenticeship (Sales NVQ), believing strongly in the importance of ‘attaining one’s goals’ in life!

Claire is a highly skilled IT trainer having delivered group courses and one to one training in Microsoft applications for 10 years.

She has a wide breadth of teaching skills and is equally as comfortable assessing the needs of new users to IT programmes as she is when delivering sophisticated courses on advanced programming.  

Whilst employed as an IT Training Consultant, Claire wrote and contributed to the design of new course materials and User Guides to support the delivery of various training packages to national clients; mainly in Investment Banking and the Corporate Sector.  Claire frequently travelled to clients across the UK and in Ireland to deliver training programmes with several high profile clients in her portfolio.     

Claire has excellent presentation skills and is accredited by the Institute of IT Training and TAP (Trainer’s Assessment Program). 

Now with a young family, Claire decided to become a freelance IT Trainer and is working with The Way Ahead Training & Consultancy and other local training providers to deliver new and improved IT skills to local SME businesses.    

John has a wealth of HR and training experience in both the private and public sectors. He was the Employee Relations Manager for a major UK financial services business, before undertaking a role in European business development, running the Group’s Total Quality Management (TQM) programme in two of its operating divisions; and then going on to run a large customer services department.

Since leaving corporate life he has run his own business, consulting across the whole HR spectrum and brings to us his training experience in Performance Management, Team-building (built around MBTI profiling), one-to-one coaching, and his particular speciality, Employee Relations. He runs our courses focused on the rights employees have in the workplace e.g. contracts, discipline/grievance, absence management, and also supports us with our management skills programmes.

John has an MBA and is a Member of the Employment Tribunal in Southampton.

Diana is an enthusiastic and experienced trainer, qualified Business Performance Coach and facilitator. She has designed, written and produced material for training courses, in-house programmes and home study. She has been involved in the largest financial services laptop point of sale training programme in Europe, as well as course design project leader for training over 500 customer care staff within the prestigious Bluewater leisure and retail park in Dartford, Kent.

Diana was on the Board of Directors of a well-known vehicle contract hire company for a number of years and built up an impressive customer base, recruiting, managing and training a team of account managers and customer service staff. She is an Affiliate Member of the Institute of Leadership and Management and the CIPD, and has a Doctorate of Philosophy in Clinical Hypnotherapy. She is also qualified as a Strength Deployment Inventory® (SDI®), Motivational Mapping® and MiRO® practitioner.